Rowe Tribe

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

The Old Maine Church- A Place to Worship the Lord- Sunday, July 28, 2013

We told the Jacksons that we'd like to go to their church with them, so Sunday morning, we loaded up for the short drive to the church they call home each summer while at the lake.

Parking lot

An incredible building built in 1850. One of the neatest parts of the morning for me was when I discovered that the front door was standing open the entire time during the service. There's just something about church that should be like that!

Every Sunday, the 163 year old bell gets rung. This Sunday, you can tell who wanted to ring it...

Rowe Boys

However, Elizabeth worked her way into the mix too for some ringing time.

Scott doing the Old Testament reading; which Kyle and Clint Jackson usually do when they're here.

Interior of the church as seen from the back. Some renovation, such as the ceiling but original windows, pews, and floors.

After the service, Scott found a piano of course, tucked up in the vestibule behind the pews.

This is the floor; some mighty pines for this church. The floors downstairs had even wider boards. One can worship the Lord anywhere and as I looked out the window during the service once, my heart reflected on all that was right and good about my life and I thanked the Lord for the beautiful Maine sky and all my blessings. I am so blessed and joyful. My cup runneth over indeed.

Tribal Summit Down by the Lake - Saturday, July 27, 2013

I am reminded of the chant from the movie, Horton Hears a Who? "We are Here, We are Here, We are Here!" "We are Here, We are Here, We are Here!"

That's how we felt on Saturday afternoon when we made it to the cabin in Maine. Actually it's called a camp. This must be a Yankee thing, or a Maine thing. For me, the word camp conjures up an image of 100 girls running around screaming and multiple cabins and other places of recreation. Not so up here, a camp is your family's place, the house, cabin, or whatever kind of structure you have near or on the lake. Our friends, the Jacksons were instrumental in helping us find this particular camp; we were looking for something that wasn't very expensive, that would work for our family, not be too far for Jeff to go when he teaches, and would be close to our friends. Suffice it to say, I think they would like us close by as well, so Kim definitely did some looking and calling around. The lady we are renting from has apparently lived at this camp many years ago when her children were young. It belonged to her family and they still use it.

Just a short walk down the steps from the front porch to get to the sandy beach and the dock. Now, it may not look like much of a beach but it's perfect for our purposes and not very many camps have such great water access, much less a walk in beach. We are looking forward to the multiple beautiful sunsets which are directly out over the water.

At the Jackson Place

The Jackson Crew and The Rowe Tribe have gotten together on Saturday evening for a summit by the lake. I have "stolen" Kim Jackson's title for my title because I like it so much! She wrote a great blog post, with some exxagerations of course, if you know Kim, you know what I mean, which you can read here. We have known the Jackson family since early 1999. She decided we didn't need to cook on our first night in and fed us Perry's Chicken Chili and the children roasted hot dogs over the fire. Perry's parents, who live just down the road, came over too, and we visited with them again. We have seen them over the years when they used to come for extended periods to Mt. Pleasant. We met Perry and Kim's neighbors and their 3 grandchildren. A very pleasant evening in the upper 70s with a gentle breeze and a fun time was had by all.

Some of the kids from the 2 tribes, but not all! Perry and Kim's crew (I'll call them the crew since they are both former military pilots), includes twins, Kyle and Clint, who are 20. They were 6 when we met at East Cooper Baptist Church way back in 1999. Ok, now I'm feeling old. We had a just turned one year old, Scott. Fast forward 14 years and we have delivered 8 more children and Perry and Kim obeyed the Lord's call on their lives to adopt children from China. They now have 4 girls: Rachel, Katie, Jenny, and Sarah. And I'm not sure this is the end for them; I expect another adoption for them later on. They have done such a wonderful job with the girls, who have blossomed under their care. Rachel, who is 12 and adopted as a baby, has pretty much grown up with our Sarah Kelly, who is 12. Now my girls are continuing to make friendships and lasting memories with their girls.

Elsie baby finds a friend. We all couldn't decide if she liked the doggie so much because they have the same coloring or if the doggie is the same color as her "blankie"! At any rate, Parker and the baby got along just great!

It's dark, we're all tired and happy, it's time to go to bed. Goodnight Parker! Goodnight Baby! Goodnight Maine!

3 of the boys' guns back at our place; they are ready for adventure!

July 26-27, 2013: Lake Placid and the Lake Champlain Ferry

We went through this town and Elizabeth wanted her picture taken in front of the sign with her name on it.

A little bit of a detour to see some of the sights leftover from the Winter Olympics.

Impossible to show in this picture, but this ski jump still used for training, is so much higher than it looks; we were amazed by the heights.

This gives a little bit more of a perspective.

Countryside looking the other direction from the town of Lake Placid.

The town of Lake Placid was packed! We read in a book about all the events which are constantly going on, training, games, tourist attractions, but lots and lots of sports activities; this is a "fit" town. To complicate the traffic further, an Ironman Competition is being held on Sunday. We saw the 2.5 mile corridor marked off for the swim and everywhere we drove we saw painted green arrows and people running and biking preparing for the 110 mile bike race and 26 mile marathon race to follow the swim. These amounts of exercise are just too hard for me to comprehend.

Leaving Lake Placid and going over to Plattsburg, New York to spend the night.

Saturday morning, July 27, 2013. Time to cross into Vermont. The Ferry acoss Lake Champlain will take us to an island in Vermont which has roads built on marsh connecting to the mainland.

A little windy and chilly.

The other ferry boat returning.

Getting ready to dock

The Green Mountains of Vermont

Crossing the bridge is how to get to the very small town of Montpelier, the capital of Vermont.

The State House in Vermont, just across the river.

More Vermont beauty

One of my favorite things about coming or being up North is looking for these statues in every town we go through; it's like a scavenger hunt for me. Almost every single town, hamlet, village, or city has one of these exact same statues in the center of their town. Each is worded slightly different but all memorialize the dead of the War Between the States and refer to it as the War of the Rebellion or the War of the Great Rebellion. For some reason this amuses me so that I find myself looking for each one knowing I will never see anything different, just different names.

New Hampshire and the top of Mt. Washington in the White Mountains. You can just barely see the buildings up on top. We went up there last year, up the Auto Road and spent some time. Jeff, Jackson, and I went up 6 years ago when we spent some time in Maine so this year it's not on the "to do" list although this is a beautiful day to go.