The best part of waking up...

Wow...long time, no blog post!  However, my trip planning is now at the do or die stage, both in the final organizing of gear and food and the challenging task of getting the rest of my life at a good stopping place to leave for a month.  These last few days have been a flurry of activity, including an amazing youth-led worship service to conclude our church school year.  I have also been dealing with a pulled muscle/muscle spasm in my shoulder and back, which just simply must go away soon.  Aleve seems to be helping, luckily.

Another highlight of the weekend was selling our dog biscuits in downtown Damariscotta.  Pam Gormley and the staff at Skidompha Library graciously allowed us to set up out front and even publicized the event in their weekly news bulletin.  Sales were steady throughout the morning...we brought home $118 and had much fun meeting both pirates and puppies.  The annual Pirate Rendezvous brings many visitors to our community to see pirates take over our town for a day, all for the great cause of raising money for Family Holiday Wishes.  The smiling pirate on the left is our school nurse, Sunny Kirkham.  Her costume and her ability to "talk pirate" were impressive.  The rest of our scrumptious Cheesy Bones and peanut butter treats will go on sale at school today.  Special thanks to Taylor Briggs, Heather Greene, and my mom, Joan Apgar, for baking with us and to Deb Walder and Rob Trial for helping on Saturday.  I have the best friends!

The food for the trip is just about ready, bagged and boxed by section.  My blog title today is a tribute to Folgers individual coffee bags, which made delicious coffee when I tried them this week.  What an easy way to have freshly brewed coffee.  Becoming familiar with my new gadgets is also an ongoing process.  SPOT is now set up to send an email to all and a text message to some of my SPOT Team members, when an updated location is transmitted.  Dad is programming some of the tricky and/or critical waypoints into the GPS and I have been practicing with some of the features on my camera, such as the self-timer and the macro feature.  It is always a shame to have a piece of equipment that can do many things, and you only understand how to do a few. 

The webpage thermometer stands at $4,205 and, with the contributions steadily arriving, we will officially hit the halfway point this week.  I will leave you with two pictures from my most recent paddle, which unfortunately was the only one over the weekend.  I am discovering that preparing for a long journey does not leave much time for short ones.  This is egg-laying season for Maine's turtles.  Here are a snapping turtle heading across the road from the cemetery into my woods and an Eastern painted turtle, at the edge of Webber Pond, both photographed on Friday.