FLASHBACK: Maine Wilderness Adventure (1974)

The summer of my junior year, I was supposed to tour Europe with a couple of high school friends but our charter flight got cancelled at the last minute.  Instead I went camping with Paul, his friend Russ, and Scott, another classmate of ours who considered himself a real outdoorsman.

Russ, Paul & Scott

We drove to Maine and hired a seaplane service to drop us off for a couple of days at a remote lake.  We had to bring in our own food and supplement it with fishing and foraging.

Believe it or not, I still have this tent.  It came in handy when I my father and I drove from El Paso to the Arctic Circle in 1980.

We walked on Knife's Edge after climbing Mount Katahdin, Maine's highest peak.

This isn't the selfie I would have taken, that's for damn sure.

Look closely below and you'll see the bear cub that caused the trip's most memorable moment.  It terrified Russ, most kindly described as a "city slicker."  Although Scott told us we had nothing to fear if we silently backed away from the mother if she showed up, Russ ran screaming down the rocks, beating his aluminum canteen as loudly as possible.

We ended our trip in Montreal with a peek at the remains of Expo 67.

Bittersweet

Doug, my 84-year-old cousin recently moved to the Beth Shalom assisted living facility in Richmond.  I last saw him in Roanoke, five years ago.  He said the funniest thing when a staff member asked him why so many people love him so much.  "Don't stay too long!"

Bolt Bus got me as far as DC's Union Station where Christine lent me her trusty Toyota Acura to make the rest of the trip.

After seeing Doug, Cathy and Scott, his children and my first cousins, once removed, took me to lunch at an Italian restaurant.  We don't know each other well, but we had a good time reminiscing about our parents and grandparents.  Doug is the only one of the group still alive.

Back in DC, Christine and I went to the Kennedy Center to see Bowie & Queen.  The less said the better about the performance.  Balletomanes may have appreciated it more than Bowie fans.

You can't go to Washington without passing a few monuments.

 I'd never seen either the FDR or Martin Luther King Memorials.

I'd hoped to indulge my passion for cemeteries at Arlington, but time constraints forced this dyed-in-the-wool peacenik to settle for the Iwo Jima Memorial.