New2Maine.com

I was thinking about how beautiful Maine is in the summer (not that winter isn’t pretty, but when you’ve spent several hours in the last week shoveling, you begin to yearn for summer), so I thought I’d look around for some photos to remind me of that beauty.

That one is of sunrise on Casco Bay. It reminds me of walking the dog at dawn around Back Cove.

And this one is of a place called Screw Auger Falls, in Grafton Notch State Park. We’ve not been there, but now that I’ve seen this, it’ll have to be on the list of destinations for Her and I to explore next spring and summer. Google tells me that Grafton Notch is about two hours from here.

There, now I feel better. Time to grab the shovel again and finish off my sidewalk.

We were out of town for the lighting of the Portland Christmas Tree, but I managed to snap a picture of it lit up at night while we were downtown a few weeks ago. This was before all of the snow that we’ve gotten, so you can actually see the sidewalk. I’ll have to go back and see what it looks like with snow around it.

By the way, if you’re interested in seeing the tree yourself, it’s on Monument Square on Congress Street. And this was taken with my cell phone, so I apologize for the poor quality.

Gingerbread men (and Bean boots) at L.L. Bean’s flagship store, originally uploaded by new2maine.

One of the great Maine traditions in the winter is to go Christmas shopping at Freeport’s L.L. Bean flagship store. The store is open 24 x 7, 365 days a year, but during the Christmas shopping season, you probably don’t want to be anywhere near the place during daylight hours. Even at 8:30 PM on a frigid Saturday night, She and I had to park in the back parking lot and walk a few minutes to get to the store.

I tried to snap some pictures outside, but they didn’t come out very well. If I go up to Freeport again, I’ll bring my tripod so the exposure times can be long enough to actually capture some detail. I included a few of the not so terrible outdoor pics on the photoset. The indoor ones, like this gingerbread cookie display, and the gingerbread L.L. Bean store complex came out much better. If you get a chance to head up to Freeport during the Christmas shopping season, and you have the patience to shop in a crowd, L.L. Bean is an experience not to be missed.

Lightning Up Maine II, originally uploaded by StarrGazr.

Another cool photo from Cape Neddick found whilst browsing Flickr (and no, this was not taken recently).

DSC_0184, originally uploaded by ldrypolcher.

A cool picture of the Cape Neddick Lighthouse, all lit up for Christmas.