Having walked out to the Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse, Kris has been inspired to run out to the light house and back. When he first looked at it, he thought a minute to run to the end of it. Distances are deceiving when you're looking at a sidewalk of giant granite blocks. After we walked it and realized it's 7/8 of a mile, the time was jokingly estimated back up to 5 minutes.

Right.

7/8 of a mile on uneven ground in five minutes?

Not going to happen.

The run, though, could. Starting the day late (AGAIN, we cannot seem to get up earlier than 11 am), Kris laced up his shoes, with my following quickly behind, and off we went.

Unfortunately, my knee locked up about 200 meters out. Kris kept going around the drive and down the street, as I took the short cut we found the other day, and started doing walking lunges to unlock my knee.

Kris caught up to me, and kept going.

Since my knee has been locking up a lot lately, I've decided to start on the lots of squats, lots of lunges, lots of balancing program I've done a couples times. While Kris was out on the breakwall, I started my lunges. As I finished up my second set of 20 lunges per leg, my left hamstring completely cramped and I nearly went down in a wave of pain.

Annoyed, I skipped the third set of lunges and tried to find Kris on the wall, checking if he was still running out.

After ten minutes of amusing myself taking pictures of the rocks, chains, seaweed and wood around the breakwall, and being unable to spot Kris in the distance, my worrying took over, and I started out along the breakwall myself. I made it half way out before Kris caught up to me running back.

"You came out a long way," he commented as I turned to head back to shore.

Yeah, yeah, I guess I did. Whoops.

We split on the run back, with my going the shorter way, and his going the longer way. When he arrived back at the room a short while after me, he flopped down on a chair and asked, "What did you think of running on the wall?"

I answered, "I thought it was meditative, and good symbolism for life. You couldn't look up into the distance, you had to be looking where you were right now, or you'd lose your footing. The stones coming up and passing you were hypnotic. When you did look up, wow, you had accomplished a lot. I liked it."

He thought they were very much like agility ladders, with the shorter steps and the side to side movements required to find good footing.

A good experience for both of us, each in its own way.

Apparently, the trick to crossing the street in Maine, and not be run over, is to wave.

Now that I know the trick, I notice all of these locals waving back.

So, Tim Hortons. Everyone knows about Tim Hortons. In Canada.

Apparently, they're in Maine, too. Close enough to Canada, apparently.

Here's my first journey into a Timmy's. While I think I look like a dork, the expression on the woman behind me is too good to keep to myself. I mean, how does this not remind you of the other look I received? I swear, I'm a magnet for this look.

When I went to Peru in 1994, at Ollantaytambo a picture was taken of me standing next to a tall stone wall, as I looked up at the camera. A person from my travel group took the picture, I don't know who it was. It's one of my favorite pictures.

Since then, I've continued having pictures taken of my looking up at the camera. I have the same pose for trips to London with Mom, Italy with Mom and Josh, the Cotswold Way with Mom and Eric, Scotland with Kris, and a host of other places. Many of the pictures are with old film, so I need to digitize some of those to have a full collection.

At Norumbega, I convinced Kris to take a picture. One of the ones of "the pose" turned out nominally well.

Today, Kris and I walked what is claimed to be "the prettiest walk in the world." No, really, there's a claim to this walk:

The thought is that there are views of the Penobscot Harbor on one side, and views of Lily Pond on the other, and trees and beautiful houses the whole way, so this must be the prettiest walk anyway.

While it is lovely, the "in the world" part has yet to be determined. We have more walks to do before that can happen.

We started out late for a walk. The walk is supposed to be two miles down, so we didn't expect it to take more than forty-five minutes or so, except that, well, we kinda forgot to include wandering time, time to take pictures, oh, look, public restrooms!, and, well, every other reason to wander instead of hustling through the walk. So, the 45 minute walk took us an hour and a half.

The walk goes through Rockport, which we had to drive to, as we're staying in Rockland, a distinction I've only recently figured out. There are often two cities with common name beginnings Rock for Rockland and Rockport, with the port one being near the water and the land/ville/town being nominally inland, but sometimes not.

So, through Rockland, out of town, around the corner, where we met several people in their yards working, happily greeting us as we walked by, and down the street. The street curves around Lily Pond, one of the ponds used for fresh water ice harvesting at the turn of the last century.

Oh, and we did pass the "famous" Galloway Cows, mentioned in the guide book.

The road is nominally flat, with a slight incline. At one point, we walked upon the Sea View Cemetery. Now, Kris has this thing, a superstition of sorts where he says you have to hold your breath as you pass a cemetery, or that's where you'll end up buried. Normally, we're driving by the cemetery when this little habit of holding his breath comes up. I mean, there are only so many cemeteries a person can be buried at (BTW, harvest what you can from my body, burn the rest, mix the ashes into some clay soil and let me help nourish the soil, please don't bury my body in a box, or store it in a crypt, it's too wasteful), and you're going to die some day anyway, so why bother with the breath holding?

Especially when you're walking by.

We didn't make it past this cemetary. Not even halfway with the road slightly uphill.

Around 2:00, we strolled into Camden and managed the lay of the land. I had my first crab roll sandwich, it being less expensive than the lobster roll sandwich, and completely delicious.

I noticed my legs were a little achy at lunch, but, well, it was still before 3 in the afternoon, so we continued up the road to visit the Norumbega Inn, a strange structure (in retrospect), that consists of "the best architectual features" Joseph Stearns liked when he built the place in 1886 after travelling the world. It reminded me of the Winchester Mystery House.

We started back, walking back through Camden and stopping at the harbor to check things out.

Kris has been talking about going on a two week schooner cruise, where everyone works on the boat. I asked Andy if he wanted to go, because I have exactly zero desire to go. Andy expressed interest, which is good. Kris had concerns about getting seasick, as the last time we went on a boat (crap, like 9 years ago?), he was sick, but he had also swallowed a gallon of salt water, which I think caused him to feed the fishes.

Being curious, he inquired about a two hour bay cruise for tomorrow from a boat with a table on the Camden Harbor dock, while I was off using the public restroom emptying the world's smallest bladder. So, there's a good chance we'll be doing that this week.

The walk back was much quicker than I expected it to be. When we came upon the cemetery on the way back, the road being a downhill walk in this direction, I challenged Kris to pass it while holding his breathe. He laughed, and said no, but thought about it again when I offered to carry the backpack. He took the challege, and started hyperventilating.

He started down the road at a light jog, and started sprinting about 2/3 of the way. I asked him about it. He said that he was trying to weigh using up oxygen by running too fast with the time it took to run. When his lungs started burning, he started sprinting, but made it!

Turns out, also on the way back is a golf course.

Given my previous mischief, no one should be surprised that I jumped on this golf course, too.

Eventually, we made it back to Rockport-not-Rockland.

There's a park next to the Rockland Harbor. To my surprise, when we passed through it, Kris asked for the camera. "Sit there," he said, pointing at the bench, "and read a book."

"Uh, I don't have a book, I have my ipad."

"Same thing."

Same thing, indeed. I think the picture turned out well.

I look like my Mom.