31 Days of Flashbacks: Quick New England Trip

 A couple of weekends ago we decided to take a spur of the moment trip to New Hampshire to visit some friends who recently moved there. The list of reasons include:
1. Glenn had just taken his Step2 CK and was taking the weekend off from studying - yay!
2. 5 of the 6 Maas family members had never been to New England
3. We had been so busy we hadn't been able to take a drive to see the leaves yet (and New York and New England are the best places to see the leaves. I am not partial, just stating the facts)
4. We will soon be traveling west, and Lord willing moving west, and this might be one of our only chances to check out New England while we still live a reasonable drive from there.
5. We hadn't seen Chris and Jaynie in over a year and wanted to check out their new home.
6. It was a trial run to practice spending time in the car and packing.

A lot of the leaves had already fallen but we did get to see some pretty views.

I heard Glenn slip up and call these "mountains." I think he's probably been in New York too long ;)

 On our drive through Vermont we got to cross Quechee Gorge and decided to stop and check it out.

It was fun seeing our shadows so we raised our hands for a picture.

We got to Chris and Jaynie's house in New Hampshire and ate really quick before heading out to try to check out the Atlantic at Wallace Sands Beach before the sun went down

We weren't super successful but we brought flashlights and were careful on the big rocks.

Checking out a tide pool by flash light.

We found a starfish.

Chris grabbed crabs out of one of the tide pools for us to check out

and then decided to try one on as an earring.

It didn't want to let go so he tried to light it on fire to scare it off :)

Caleb was really scared of the crab leg we found.

 Sunday morning we got up and made breakfast before making them skip church (we are so used to having our church service on Sunday nights now we are used to lazy Sunday mornings. We're going to have to get over that though...)

 After breakfast and hanging out we decided to head to Maine to check out Kittery Trading Post where Jaynie just started working.

You need to snuggle a moose if you are in Maine, right?

The only moose we saw were stuffed.

 Then we headed to find a beach in Maine and found a pretty fun little section of the ocean in the town of York.

Sophia and Abigail

The rocks were pretty cool - the grain makes them kind of look like they were trees at one point.

There was a "safe" path up above but it was more fun to walk along the rocks.

Sophia and Abigail collecting rocks

The littlest girls and I walked the sidewalk to get to the top of this part but everyone else scaled it.

Chris, Jaynie, Eli & Sophia!

My beautiful family!

 After a quick lunch together we had to head home so we wouldn't be back too late with real life starting again bright and early Monday morning. We drove home through Massachusetts - new state #4 for the weekend for all but me.

 It has been confirmed for us that New England is beautiful.
Thanks Chris and Jaynie for letting us invade for the weekend! It was great to see you!