Nice, but Nubbly

Amber and I took my oldest brother to the Nubble last week. Dave spent twenty years in the Navy, during which time he did a lot of things I never knew about, like reconnaissance in Vietnam. Scary stuff. Somewhere in there, he spent a little time at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and a few years ago when I invited him up to visit us here in New Hampshire, he told me he'd seen all of New Hampshire that he needed to ever see.

Well, I have a couple of siblings who heard that story, and between their efforts to guilt him into coming to see me, and my youngest daughter, who has this particular uncle completely wrapped around her pinky, he called a couple of weeks ago to announce that he wanted to "swing by" to visit after my nephew's wedding in D.C. (Since New Hampshire is such a short jaunt out of the way when you're driving from D.C. back home to Missouri . . .???) I love my brother. He also told me he'd never been to Maine, so I promised to take him there.

We had a wonderful visit. . .we're much alike, he and I, and equally content to sit and visit as to do something fancy. The weather was bright last Monday, however, and Amber didn't have to work, so we three piled in the XTerra and headed for York, Maine to kill a few birds with a single stone. We got in lots of visiting, saw some beautiful scenery (even if the leaves are just a little past peak at this point) and got him into his 50th state. I did finally break down and tell him that that last item was a bit of a ruse, since if he had been at the shipyard all those years ago, he technically had been in Maine . . . but all that did was start a discussion about the ridiculous battle between Maine and New Hampshire over where the shipyard actually falls. What a pointless, silly debate! Potato, Potahto . . . and state income taxes . . .

The greatest part of our day, though, was that the tide was crazy high last Monday! It was high in September when my other brother and my sister came for a visit, but this was higher than I'd ever seen it (when there wasn't a hurricane blowing up the coast)! The waves were beautiful, and we saw a half dozen or more surfers at the far end of Long Sands Beach. At the south end of the beach, the breakers were actually lapping over the edge of the rocks and washing across the road.

We stopped for awhile and took some pictures and David patiently listened to Amber and me go on and on about how we've never seen the tide so high . . . blah, blah . . . you'd have thought we'd never seen the ocean before!
We drove on up to the Nubble and took some more photos, but we didn't climb down on the rocks like we usually do; the tide was covering most of them.The waves were coming from the other direction, so there weren't any big breakers hitting the rocks at the lighthouse. We soaked up the sun and gawked at the huge mansions, and just enjoyed the day.

Later, we drove up to Wells and had lunch in a little, ordinary looking cafe with lots of cars parked in front of it. I kept driving past all the big, fancy looking restaurants with empty parking lots until I found one that looked liked the locals ate there. The food was great, and reasonably priced. My kind of place; clean but simple, nothing kitsch-y or cutesy or sophisticated about it -- just simple good food served by simple good folk.

I think maybe I'm becoming a New Englander after all.