Interlude: active vacation.

True!

I am interrupting my previously-scheduled "August update" posts about IronGirl #1 and the A10 to bring you a report on a short vacation I took with Andrew and his brother this past weekend. Fear not- the IG and A10 stories are coming soon!

Andrew's family has a very long friendship with two ladies who own a summer home and cabin in Mount Desert Island, Maine. Growing up, Andrew spent at least a week there pretty much every summer. I believe it looked something like this:

The O'Briens, ca. the mid-90s.
This is before the addition of Andrew's youngest brother, Marquis. 

As far as I know, Andrew has never missed a Maine trip and he really wanted me to come along this year. I was skeptical, as back-to-school time tends to be VERY busy in the children's mental health world. In the end, though, I agreed to go up for an extended Labor Day weekend. I stayed at the office until 10pm the night before we left, making plans for other therapists to cover the fully 50% of my caseload that is in crisis at the moment. To put it mildly, it was very hard to walk away.

Fortunately, the next few days wiped work right out of my mind. Our flight to Maine didn't leave until 10pm, so we took the opportunity the day before to handle one of our wedding errands:

Licensed to wed! 

I was surprised and pleased that the process of applying for a wedding license at the courthouse is actually quite romantic. Everyone involved took the time to congratulate us and wish us well. I thought that was lovely, considering they see dozens of people apply for licenses every day, and they also see many of these people return some time later to file for divorce. Somehow, optimism reigns at the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court!

A little over 12 hours later, we touched down in Mount Desert Island, ME and met up with Andrew's older brother, Chris. After a long sleep and lazy morning, Chris led us (me, really) on a driving tour of the island. It was foggy and windy, but we still caught some amazing views:

Cadillac Mountain.

"The Bubbles," which Chris hiked the day before we arrived. 

That night, we headed into downtown Bar Harbor for a raucous Maine Friday night:

What happens in Bar Harbor...

The next day, Andrew and I were feeling rested up and ready for some adventures of our own. We started the morning with a 6-mile run along the Island's "carriage roads." These are 55 miles of roads, apparently built by the Rockefellers. Once, they were used for carriages. Now, they are used by hikers, runners, bikers, and horseback riders. No cars, no noise- just soft gravel paths and breathtaking scenery like this:

6 miles hasn't felt that easy in a long, long time. Even Andrew, who usually does a walk-run combo, was able to run almost the entire distance. Sadly, the weather kept us from repeating our run the next day, but I definitely look forward to exploring more of the carriage roads on a future trip.

After the run and lunch, Andrew and I rented canoes to paddle around a huge, beautiful lake. I hadn't canoed since the great triathlon wedding of 2011, so I was very excited to pick up a paddle again. Despite our longish run in the morning, we managed to stay in the boat for over 2 1/2 hours, taking in almost the entire lake and having a great time in the process. As we paddled back to shore, we talked about how grateful we are to be able to have active, adventurous vacations. It makes all the 6am workouts worth it!

The next day, we got a steady, soaking rain all day. So, we traded in adventures for reading and eating:

I suspect we'll see the results of that day (and all of our meals out) on the Weight Watchers scale this week, but it was worth it!

On Labor Day, Chris drove 18 hours (!) to return us to our doorsteps and our jobs. We slept through our alarms the past two days, but this reprieve won't last long: one of us (ahem) has IronGirl #2 this weekend!