We’re back on the road. And so are a lot of you. Last year was lost to the pandemic. This year, millions of us got vaccinated, and started to travel again. Half of those millions, so it seemed, went to Maine. As did we.

We spent a week on Peaks Island, in Casco Bay off of Portland. Helen, Pat’s sister, rented a house for a week not far from her daughter, who lives on the island. She invited Pat and another sister, Bea, to share the rental and to bring spouses, blankets and towels.

We made two stops on the way, including Amherst, where Seamus, Pat’s grandson, was turning 18 and getting ready to go off to Macalester College in the fall. Here is Seamus with his cake. Unfortunately for him, shortly after this picture was taken, his piece of cake crossed the event horizon of the small black hole that can be indirectly seen in this picture by the energy it was throwing out.

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To get back and forth from Portland to Peaks, we take the ferry, a 20-minute ride across Casco Bay. I thought it was a good deal for seniors (a status I entered during the pandemic): $3.70, round trip.

While there is plenty to do in Portland, we spent much of the week relaxing, visiting with family and friends, enjoying cocktail hour (thanks to bartending skills acquired during the pandemic), and eating delicious meals.

We did cross the bay into town several times, mostly to shop or eat—including a repeat visit to Scales restaurant, where we enjoyed a memorable meal several years ago. Here we are with our housemates—Pat’s sisters Bea and Helen, and Bea’s husband Kevin. I had the scallops (with sweet corn, roasted peppers, applewood bacon, corn cream) and the peach and raspberry shortcake. Another memorable meal.

The island did have its own attractions. For example, there was the Umbrella Cover Museum, the only one in the world, so they claim, dedicated to those little pieces of fabric you put over your umbrella. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but it appealed to my sense of humor.

The last time we visited Peaks, to have dinner with Jessica and her family in 2016, it was pouring rain, and I never got a sense of the island, since we walked straight from the ferry to Jess’s house, and it was dark after dinner. This time, I spent an afternoon walking around the entire island, admiring the many attractive houses and gardens, and other scenery. It helped that it was a beautiful sunny day.

After Peaks, we headed northwest to Wayne, Maine, to visit friends Paula and Richard, who recently moved from Takoma Park to a house on Dexter Pond in Wayne.

Highlights from our few days at Villa Gravia, as Paula and Richard call their home, were the meals—lobster one night, steak another night, from locally-sourced beef grown at a farm about a mile away, and duck on our final night.

We also made a visit to a local winery, Willows Awake, for a tasting. Maine wine? The Androscoggin Valley will not overtake the Rhone valley anytime in the near future. But the Australian owner of Willows Awake is trying to make a go of it, using grapes bred for the cold, like Frontenac and Marquette.

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When we were not eating, I enjoyed watching the hummingbirds at the feeders. If I sat still, they would get quite close.

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When it was time to leave Maine, we did not join the mass exodus on I-95 going south. Instead, we drove across western Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and the Adirondacks in New York, where we had lunch with another of Pat’s nieces, Vannesa, in Saranac Lake. Our destination was Syracuse, where my mother lives. Along the way, we passed mountain lakes and small towns familiar to me from family camping trips when I was a kid.

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After a few days in Syracuse, we made the long trek to Takoma Park on back roads and less-crowded highways in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. It was good to have finally been on the road again.