Since 1970, much of our vacation time has been spent in our cottage on a lake in Downeast Maine. It became a cottage when we finally got electricity in 1982. for the first twelve years we used Aladdin lamps and cooked with gas - which we hauled in - We hand-pumped water up from the lake, which was also our bathing pool. One sabbatical year we stayed until late October - our bathing was pretty brief that month!
We have lately upgraded the cottage by adding a wing with two more bedrooms, very little of the cabin remains as we bought it. Nowadays our yearly taxes cost more than half of our original purchase price - but of course then there was no road within a quarter mile and then it was just a logging trail. Times of changed, we actually have street signs and a street address - of course the road is still little better than a jeep trail but FedX and UPS do have to deliver - not that they are especially thrilled when they do. Our mailbox is at the head of the private road - about two miles away.
Our vacation spot is spectacularly beautiful -a very large lake ( two+ miles wide and six+ miles long) with high hills and a mountain at one end. It is a deep lake carved out by the mile-high glacier that covered the area twelve millennia ago.
We stay here from about July first until mid-October. By then all the foliage has Fall colors and New England is at its most beautiful. As we drive down to Florida, we sort of follow the Fall south.
Life is good.
