Your MeInMaine blog post author Andrew Mooers is on a family vacation to London England, Amsterdam Holland, and Paris France Lighted And High Enough To See For Over 40 Miles.and think of my parents who were on part of the same trip back in 1963.
I worked some long hours and squirreled away the funds for this vacation. My parents won their trip 47 years ago. I remember North East Airlines landing at the Houlton Maine International Airport to pick them up as a child of 7.
My great Aunt Hettie took care of us back on the Maine potato farm my parents owned.
My Dad entered a contest with Bemis bag company, the outfit he bought his potato bags from and crossed his fingers. In twenty five words or less, explain why you like Bemis bags was the vacation to London / Paris trip winning question.
I remember looking at the images, the slide show carousels of the trip and thinking some day making the same European jaunt.
Living in Maine, it is neat in mid winter to head to blue green water, to jack the heat up a tad and enjoy a change of scenery.
But the trips through the Louvre, up in to the Eiffel Tower and Arc De Triomphe, seeing Big Ben and London Bridge, St Paul’s Cathedral make me feel close to my parents. Both parents gone now but my two boys and I no doubt tramping the same tourist sites, vacation attractions as they had nearly five decades before.
Fun trip but anxious to get oldest son to last semester at George Washington University in DC after getting back to the states. And to enjoy youngest son a few more weeks home from Colorado College in Colorado Springs CO. Maine, big state, neat place to be from or vacation in.
Our train is heading from Amsterdam after an 186 mile per hour earlier zip trip from London.
Today’s train taking us to Paris on a Tramped By Big Ben, All The Sights From London Eye To Westminster Abby.family vacation.
The use of bikes, efficient use of trains and more sensitivity to the environment / resources hits me as more evident on this vacation. Holland is more than tulips, wooden shoes, windmills. Trains are so neat as they take you right to the destination. Leaving you curb side in the communities you want to vacation in, and ability to just walk to your hotel.
No runways, no luggage rotations to discover maybe your bag made it or not.
Taking lots of images and will post as time allows! Not cold weather, easy walk around areas and friendly folks pumping me for information on Maine as much as my family and I are asking lots of questions to bone up on their area of the planet.
Moonlighting, extra jobs to round out the process of promoting Maine, getting the word out about the Pine Tree State, Vacationland up here in the right hand corner of the country.
For years MeInMaine author yours truely has been a member of the Active Rain blog network. And if you follow the MeInMaine blog posts, you might enjoy a few of the posts on the AR platform.
The Active Rain blog network is over 198,000 strong. In addition to real estate related topics covered in depth, many communities around the world are highlighted. Images, videos, helpful links and just information from local real estate related industry bloggers are posted hourly by many.
Who better than a local, live eye in the sky at the scene of the community center to post about anything from schools, where to eat, health care and what to do for fun than a native of the village.
You don’t get a monthly power utility bill when you live off grid in Maine.
Your lifestyle changes in a good way and it is a decision, self inflicted choice these days. In Daniel Boone’s era or when Martha and George Washington sat down for dinner at the White house with candle light, it was not.
Living off grid has many meanings, suggests many different images, designs on how to achieve it in a person’s head. Some folks gasp, flinch and are horrified to think of not just plugging in the curling iron, firing up the dryer to fluff up those towels.
Others think better for the earth, less carbon and new ways to save money and get pretty much the same results. Independence from their old habit of power consumption. Now way more aware of what it costs, how to get it cheapest. Wind generation is big in Maine. On large and small scale. I have sold Maine land to folks that wanted to be on a dead end road without power as they thought of this lack of juice as a plus. But knowing others would consider it a negative.
Less people around you means more space, less what did I do wrong now or have to stop in your opinion.
Not anti-social, just enjoying your own company and not wanting to bother anyone else. And vice versa.
Heating with wood since Maine is 91 percent forested is a given and requires no electricity.
Little gas for the chainsaw to cut the trees, yard them out or maybe for a wood splitter.
But there, got heat covered. Automatic heat like a gas wall unit makes it possible to zip down to visit family, shop out of town too.
Southern orientation to capture the sunlight and heat is like having lights turned on in every room courtesy of the sun. Smaller watt flourescents use little energy that can be collected with solar panels, generator charging batteries on dark days, water wheels in brooks or rivers if riparian rights exist. Or a little Whisper class, type wind generator.
Had a fellow that worked at the Houlton Maine post office who had several batteries in his car that charged on the way to and from work. In winter he could use the colder temperatures outside for food refrigeration. But told me in spring, summer, fall, he would stop at the market on the way home. Pick up whatever he needed for the family meal, combined with garden grown vegetables, fruits from the open land he cleared around his Maine log home.
Raising beef, critters that you name and expect to slaughter to put on the table is hard though.
Had two pigs growing up that Dad convinced the four boys that they were not the same ones we fed, chased around the barn and had been swapped.
We would never have knowingly munched on, ate a friend, pet. No matter how hungry.
More living off grid in Maine, anywhere resources if this lifestyle has you thinking about reducing overhead, living healthier, happier. Maine homesteading, living off the grid, being self sufficient is very doable. How do you think our earlier generations, relatives did it on the farm?
Over the holidays in Maine open horse sleigh rides, singing Maine Homes, Nice And Warm And Filled With Holiday Spirit, Tradition.Christmas carols outside friends and neighbor homes and home made food deliveries happen.
Christmas is family and traditions at home, in communities, at church or school. And very hard for anyone that lost a loved one, with anyone that is missing this holiday season.
Had the neice of my secretary tell me this morning about the police department in Windham Maine. A friend of her’s that was killed in a drunk driver car wreck with two kids in the car was shocking, horrible news around the holidays a few years back. And the mother’s birthday was a week away from her death. The two kids in the car lived, are okay. Different dads and one went to live with an aunt in Portland, the other with a dad in Bangor.
And when the Windham Maine police department reported to the scene of the accident, they discovered a Christmas shopping list in the mother’s pocket book, purse. The police department divided up the list and bought all the items on it for those two kids and everyone else on that list. Making the deliveries, all without fan fare. Maine people are like that. Doing the right thing, rising to the occasion to make an awful tragedy, situation better in any small way.
Not for attention, not a publicity stunt and all done behind the scenes needing no recognition. That is Christmas to me, helping others that are hurting, needy, struggling with life’s ups and downs. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year From MeInMaine Blog. And please follow our sister blog posts on Active Rain.
Big Maine Moose, Little Domestic Kitty Cat, But Both Respect Each Other, Get Along.
The MeInMaine Blog posts try to hit on the nooks, crannies, neat people and places in the Pine Tree State, Vacationland.
Like this blog post on living off grid in Maine on a private island. Maine is a four season area with self sufficiency, free thinking and hard work the fiber of the fewer but friendlier people who live here. Much of the simpler living traces back to farm roots, working in the woods considering the state is 91% forested, dotted with trees, timber. Fishing off the coast of Maine in harsh weather, rolling seas helps define what a person who lives up here in the right hand corner of the world is made of, all about.
There are Maine blog posts on colleges, universities too. I spied a workshop on media, photography, film in Maine and thought maybe that would be fun to fit in, sit through, attend. Often the blog posts in Maine are discovered surfing myself for something on line and thinking hey, that is an event that should be broadcast, passed along. That I would enjoy.
Or maybe the travels, wandering give us a bus ride to a home schooling Maine blog post with some kinda of delicious looking blueberry images that got my attention. Or cross pollenation with sister Maine blogging platform on Active Rain where there are approaching 1700 posts on everything under the sun.
It is fun to blog Maine posts and see how something on the national level can have a local approach, copy with a salt and pepper simple seasoning of images.
Maine images say a thousand words. Media types are so plentiful to show and tell Maine to anyone on line holding a droid, balancing a lap top, sitting in front of a computor monitor with visual elements, not just a flow of electrons making words to follow.
