Quinn Thanksgiving 2011

We spent Thanksgiving in Utah with my family, next time we go out to visit we will not  only have a new baby in tow, but will have to start paying for a plane ticket for Ira.

As always with my family there was a lot going on with everyone together in one place. We never had a dull moment.

Besides a wonderful feast, a major highlight was a one day blitz to Southern Utah to get a canyon hike in. It was the first time all the siblings had been out on an adventure in quite awhile. We did Slideanide just south of Hanksville, UT in the poison spring area.

 McKay Quinn Planking. I'm going to start a counter cultural reverse plank one of these days.

A canyon adventure would never be complete without some water.

  Group photos at the end of the hike:

 My brother Nate and his wife Lauren

 My sister Camille and her husband, Gregg

 My sister Tiff and her husband, Araon

 Sharon couldn't come because of the pregnancy. As the only married sibling without my spouse to pose with I forced to improvise.

It was wonderful to be with family during the Thanksgiving holiday. You can see more pictures on my Brother and Sister's Blogs.

Wasem Fruit Farm and Talladay Farm

We returned to the Wasem Fruit Farm with a friend from work and his fiance. The homemade donuts are awesome, we need to get there earlier so we have more of a selection than cinnamon sugar. 

 There is always a line for the homemade donuts, apple cider, and fresh fruit. We can't resist it though.

 Ira in the miniature kids maze. He didn't quite get what to do, but we eventually made it through. 

We also found a great groupon for the farm next door, Talladay Farm, and their huge corn maze.

 Ira helped me navigate. I wanted to do it without the map, but I got out voted, so we did the challenge of finding all the 'hidden' posts.

Sharon, Beth, and John trying to figure out where we were.

It was a fun afternoon activity and Ira did really well. It made me feel very... Midwestern and got me in the fall mood.

Portland, ME

There are a lot of places that we want to go to in close proximity to Danbury. One of my best friend, Dave Sutherland, was finishing a short medical stint in Portland, Maine so we decided to make our first trip up there to see him. It was great to visit with Dave and explore a little piece of the eastern most state. The weather was beautiful and the food was wonderful. The pictures below tells our story well.

We drove half way up Thursday evening and stayed the night in Massachusetts. The campground was nice, I think we missed all the summer traffic. We stayed in this one room cabin for the night, it made things easier with Ira.

Friday we finished our drive up and meet Dave on the Eastern Promenade. Ira was a good sport, so was Dave. We were happy the got along so well.

We took a ferry to Peaks Island to explore the Island life of the Northeastern United States. Ira was cute on the boat and maybe a little sea sick...

There were these cool scooner boats you could get rides on, we didn't do it this time around.

Dave was our Portland, ME expert tour guide. I really enjoyed hanging out with him.

After about three years of searching for a good sun hat, Sharon finally found one on the island.  It turns out to be the old lady hat of choice there. 

The guys exploring the Island coast.

The ferocious coastal wildlife. Don't be deceived.

Saturday morning we headed out to the Bradbury State Park and did this grueling .3 mile and couple hundred foot elevation hike to the top of Bradbury Peak. Okay, so it wasn't all that scary, just Dave at the top. You could see the ocean off in the distance.

Fate would have it that on our way to Bradbury we discovered a little community celebration of Fun Day! That's right, Fun Day. We couldn't help but humor fate by stopping in to get in on the fun. The main(e) event was the local dog show complete with course. We enjoyed the fire departments juicy hamburgers and I quote, their "wicked good, fresh, dug up three days ago from a local farm" french fries. I might be biased as an Idahoan, but they weren't all they were hyped up to be. The hamburger and root beer float were excellent.

 I do have to insert the irony of the state of ice cream in Maine. While on the Island the day before we got some great fresh fruit pies 'a la mode' (with ice cream) however, the ice cream was more...I mean all cream and no ice. We decided later that night to try again at the famous Friendly's restaurant, but to our great astonishment the ice cream didn't make it intact yet again. The irony of the story comes in at Fun Day. The ice cream in our root beer floats was solid and as icy as ice cream comes, the one ice cream dessert where you really just want the cream to make your root beer more tasty.

A trip to Maine wouldn't be complete without a visit to a lighthouse. This one is the most picturesque in all of Maine. It was very scenic. It was also nice to sit next to the ocean and listen to the waves crashing on the jagged shore.