The Maine Soap Box Derby State Race Is June 18th In Houlton ME, Aroostook County.
On a specially engineered hill, racers learn the effects of gravity in two lane races. After each initial phase of a heat, the same racers swap wheels, re-race in different lanes. The best over all time of the two runs moves on, on the heat brackets. Hopefully with a chance to represent Maine in the All American Soap Box Derby Race in Akron Ohio.
I’m partial to the Maine state musical competitions with all the talent of Vacationland in one venue. Houlton Maine was a host two years running and I was lucky enough to help out as an MC for part of the performances. Here are some of the musical highlights of those performances.
Plan to take in a concert in Maine this spring and summer.
And if you are lucky enough to live here in Maine, become involved in the nearest local community chorus and band program.
Making music to listen to or for others enjoyment is one of the greatest pleasures and a healthy life habit. Come on, it’s summer in Houlton Maine and McGill’s Community Band is set up in the park, it’s must be thursday night. Music makes you hum, sing, tap your fingers, lift your toe and smile, feel good. Which concert are you chasing tickets for, excited about attending in Maine?
Sunday in Maine is supposed to be set aside to count your blessings, relax with family, remove your nose from being pressed tightly to the grindstone.
To take a deep breath, reflect on how you are doing to be a better person helping others around you where you live. And thinking of those far far from where you lay your head down at night. Awareness. We all have room for improvement but most would get an “A” for trying. Our hearts in the right place with our daily efforts around the blue and green marble.
In Maine, there are many places that feel spiritual, special and where we gravitate to often to listen and learn. It is not just under a steeple, inside where pews are lined up like rows of Christian soldiers on Sundays. Or prayer meetings on Wednesday nights. Climbing Mount Katahdin with the kids, skiing down any size Maine mountain, can put you in that place. Heading out on to a bottle smooth, calm Maine lake at 5 AM in the morning as the sun comes up is another setting ripe for that same connection. So can watching Maine wildlife from lake loons to white tail deer and bald eagles soaring over head scanning for lunch below.
Working hard on a Maine farm to get the hay in before those black threatening clouds roll in, open up and ruin the cutting you just baled. Struggling with tractor problems, baler glitches. But then closing the barn doors tightly.
The Maine hay crop all in where it is nice and dry.
Safe and secure just as the hard, increasing force pelting rain drops violently begin the attack on the barn metal roof. Just in time. There is an awareness, a closeness to what matters and giving credit where it is due. To God and community, your parents who shaped you. And for just being in your special place on earth every day in a rural off the beaten path state like Maine. We all consider ourselves very fortunate, lucky, grateful to live in Maine. And we are. It is not like this every place.
Today’s sermon is about gratitude. Being grateful is being rich.
My Mom, Dad preached it often, reminding their four boys that gratitude is riches. It is a life long adapted, perfected habit or skill that no matter how bleak or dire, something good comes out at the end of the personal or family or community storm.
And when everything goes your way and you are singing inside, happy radiated so loudly everyone knows for miles around without you uttering a word, telling them, you don’t take personal credit. And are humbled, aware that life has twists and turns but this is one scenic turnout to enjoy, bask in, reflect over. Maine has lots of “scenic turn outs”. Internal and external “photo opportunities“.
Everything happening with casual speed is how most folks lives play out. All the events, one by one unfolding, arriving, playing out right on time. The way they are suppose to day in and day out. If you are lucky to have been blessed with kids, live in a state and town that gives you a sense of purpose, you are fortunate. It is not about you, it is about others and being grateful for all you do have. I am a personal fan of Maine and love where I live. I think you would be happy here too. Here are some options on breaking off a chunk of Maine for your own. Get here quick as you can.
When you are lucky enough to live in Maine, you have access to outdoor four season recreation second to none.
Living here in Vacationland means natives are spoiled. We get reminded everytime a new visitor lets us know it is not this way many places. Crime in Maine is the 4th lowest. Foreclosure, short sale and repossession (FSSR) is 46th lowest in Maine. So the recent voting of Maine as the number one most peaceful state did not surprise locals.
When you live in Maine, a local church bean supper is a big deal. You get to see folks you know, grew up with, went to school, work with and everyone is connected.
There is a strong sense of community in a small town in Maine.
Home grown volunteer efforts are visible loud and clear everywhere you look. Living lives of purpose and wanting to make a difference, help out. That is what Maine people are all about and family based, church oriented, God fearing along with that work ethic.
Not expecting a hand out, feeling grateful for all we do have. Not lamenting shiny material items we don’t need.
There is an attitude that if you don’t own money, have no debt, you are rich.
If you are grateful, happy, full of joy, you are rich. Mainers have a habit of no matter how tough the going gets to find the silver lining. To rationalize but this or that is something good that came out of it all. Or it could have been worse thinking.
Our living in Maine is simple, the people are pretty sharp and have it figured out. Heating with wood, saving money for rainy days, planting gardens and supporting local farmers. Putting a face to the food grown close to home, locally is important. Food is as addictive as air and water. Folks in Maine don’t need to be reminded of how to run the day to day. Maine, the state up here in the right hand corner of the country. Almost in Canada, discover ME.
Lighting The Way, Communication With Light, Horns In Maine.
Americans are masters at multi tasking, juggling too much from over booked lives and should camp out more in places like Maine.
We in Maine try to keep it simple, fun, rewarding and usually with low or no cost involved. Camping outdoors in Maine is one past time that requires little money but provides big rewards, rich memory making opportunities. Acadia is a Maine national park with seacoast carriage rides offered by a Houlton Maine attorney and his family, where you could even bring your horse on the camping trip.
Maybe camping is getting away from signs of man. Waking up in the wilds, with animals, scenery and sampling some clean natural resources. Maine wilderness camping means cooking on an open fire, pitching a tent. Or using an existing lean to at your Vacationland out post.
But if your idea of the perfect Maine family camping vacation is by a pristine lake, catching fish you eat for supper you might be surprised that some like winter camping best.
To climb and camp Baxter Park’s Mt Katahdin in the winter. All bundled up, filling your lungs with fresh crisp Maine air. And your field of vision filled with white, sugar coated images of Baxter Park. Of Mt Katahdin that most only see when everything is green and brown not blue and white.
As a kid I remember hiking up smaller hills like 1400′ high Horse Mountain, Haystack, Echo, Mt Chase on family weekends with my four brothers, parents. Always with home made, cooked on a fire food to go along with the change of scenery on the family outing. But recall yearly renting a family place on the Maine ocean.
Sampling the denisons of the deep, delicacies fished out of the water off the famous rock bound Maine coast line.
Usually in the Camden, Rockland and Belfast area but venturing further out to explore islands off the Maine coast too. Growing up in Aroostook County on a Maine potato farm, the lobster boats, quaint harbor life of close knit coastal communities creating a sharp, pleasant contrast.
As an adult and a parent, frequent trips with the four kids hiking, usually with lots of extra friends or cousins continued the tradition started by my parents. My kids as young adults like to camp, get outdoors, pitch a tent and paddle a canoe, kayak on a Maine lake or river. I have gone with a group of friends over the years to Jewell Island putting in at South Harpswell Maine.
Maine lighthouses and lobsters feeds to collect photos, visit. Many vacationers spend years planning trips to them all. Everyone does vacations in Maine different and like praying, there is not wrong way. There are more than 60 light houses in Maine.
To some Maine camping means a three quarter million motor home touring a Land Rover, Mercedes or Hummer H3 SUV.
The shiny gas guzzling beast more of a land yatch with direct TV, air conditioning, a furnace and two “pull outs” larger than most people’s home living rooms. Here’s a list of Maine campgrounds for RV vacations.
Whatever you do, camp in Maine based around whatever your idea of outdoor fun recreation is. Depending on your wallet size. To eventually own your own Maine waterfront property. Discover Northern Maine and all it has to offer in wilderness four season camping.
As a kid you spent time on your grandfather, grandmother’s Maine farm summers, thought some day this was going to be for you.
But with the cost of buying that Maine farm, the dream has gotten a little faded. Harder to see, hear on the mental projector playing on the back of the inside of your head.
Luckily, Maine real estate is lower cost all across, around the board. But for buying a Maine farm specific assistance, the ME Department Of Agriculture offers some helpful guidance for those wanting to plant, cultivate and hoe, harvest crops. Or to raise critters. The Maine Farm Link organization also is a portal designed to help maintain the tradition, transfer of the family farm. When there is no family member stepping up to climb on, and jump off the tractor to make hay while the sunshines so to speak.
No one would argue that locally grown close to home Maine farm fresh food is best. Beyond nutritional excellence for your family’s health and what you place on the dinner table each day. But to be a farmer in Maine these days it takes more than a love for the soil, the land and plowing, tilling the good earth. The money, resources to take on the job of running a farm of any size is the big stumbler.
Maine is the 46th lowest for FSSR (foreclosure, short sale, repossession affected property sales) but for good reason.
Very conservative loans on homes and even more restrictive, narrow standards that are hurdles tough to clear for the privledge of being a Maine farmer, to own land.
Beginning Maine farm resource information means going back to school for those with a love of the land. Organic Maine farming with no pesticides have trouble with yields to make a profit. And when the economy tightens, the reaching for that organic produce costing more than what is shipped in from farm factories huge spreads stops.
Maine farming has it’s ups and downs because of the weather and markets, neither of which can be controlled. Constant adjustment, more than one income stream from the family farm in Maine is needed. And usually someone with a “real job” that offers hospitalization benefits and a weekly pay check to help plain out the household farm budgeting process. Maine, wake up, start your dream.
