July Recap

I'll just do a very quick recap of July, since I was terrible about posting anything! At the beginning of the month, I went to CA to see family/friends!!  I had an amaaazing time there, and getting to spend time at my parents' ranch is so relaxing, and it's just so beautiful there. I had such a great time seeing everyone, and I miss everyone soooooo much.  My time flew by way too quickly!! 

I arrived on July 4th, so my parents picked me up from the airport and drove us back to their ranch in Oakdale!  Brad, Amanda, Cassidy, and Addison all came over to eat some dinner and enjoy some fireworks!  The fireworks were EXCEPTIONALLY wonderful this year!

The Oakdale Cheese shop has a new pond in front of their shop with some koi fish, and they also have a new farm next to it where you can pet some animals!  I made a few friends. 

 

Koi pond! 

The sweetest gal ever.  She was pregnant and just loved to be petted. 

Sweet Maggie! This is my parents' dog, and she is the sweetest pup. 

My parents have this sign up in their kitchen and I looooove it so much!!  And it SO fits my parents, because this is exactly what they've done!!  They are so happy at the ranch, and they're just loving life.  

Here's my sweet niece Cassidy!!  Brad, Amanda, Cassidy, and Addison all got SUPER sick while I was in town, and it was kinda getting passed around their family.  Somehow my parents and I stayed healthy the whole time!  One day when Brad and Addison were still very sick and Amanda was at work, but Cassidy was healthy and pretty bored so my dad and I went to pick her up so she could hang out at the ranch with us for a bit! 

 My trip to CA went by wayyyyy too quickly!!  I already miss everyone so much.  Things have been VERY busy since I got back to PA!  We had some fun activities in July, and I'm REALLY happy that July is almost over now because I'm ready for summer to be over! Here's a little glimpse of our July:

I went to see a production of Legally Blonde the musical! I was wondering how they would turn it into a musical, but it was great!!  It was so funny.  I met up with my friend Colleen in Philly at the Walnut Street Theater, which is the oldest theater in the U.S.!  Crazy, huh?  It's a really great little theater.  They're going to have a musical of Young Frankenstein in September, and I really want me and McGee to go see that one!  Looooved Legally Blonde though!

 And last week I went with McGee and Mo to see the live taping of my FAVORITE podcast, which is How Did This Get Made?  If you've never listened to that podcast, it's hilarious.  It's hosted by 3 of my favorite comedians, and I listen to it alllll the time while I'm at work.  Basically, every episode they have one terrible movie that they're analyzing, and it's them discussing all of the terrible/great things about the terrible movie.  So, the movie they chose for the Philly show was Double Dragon, so we all watched Double Dragon before the show and then they recorded their podcast in front of the live audience!  They always have some audience participation, so it was a GREAT time.  The theater was also really cool!  I'd never been to the Met in Philly before, and it was great.

You guys... This movie was a great one for the show!!  Soooo terrible and funny. Loved it. 

There's 3 of my favorite comedians!  It's Jason Mantzoukas (I looooove him so much!!), June Diane Raphael, and Paul Scheer. 

That's the quick recap of our July!  It has been CRAZY hot here in Philly, with temps near 100 degrees PLUS humidity. So, it's been gross.  August is usually the grossest month, so I hope it isn't too bad.  I can't wait for Fall!!  I hope Fall comes very quickly.  I hope you're all having really great summers so far!! 

Solid Sound Festival

Hey guys!  Wow, I haven't posted at all in July!  So, it's catch-up time!  I'll do one post on the Solid Sound Festival, which was actually last month, and then I'll do a quick July catch-up post! 

The Solid Sound Festival is this amaaaazing festival that happens every 2 years, and it's organized by the band Wilco.  If you don't know Wilco, you should totally check them out!  They are truly great.  And the festival is always so fun, because it's 3 days, and it's held at this venue called Mass MoCA, which is an area that has a huge contemporary art museum, as well as tons of outdoor stages and large areas set up for food trucks, etc. 

This year we had an amaaazing group go to the festival, and we rented a really cool AirBnB that was a very short drive to Mass MoCA!  It was a really great Solid Sound! 

Here's our group!  That's Timmy, Kevin, Me, Mook, Mo, Rob (Fro's boyfriend), Fro, Jen (Michael's wife), and Michael (the opera singer)

Me and Kevin enjoying some relaxing on a hill! 

Beers in boots.

Kevin, Mo, and Mook!  And the Wilco sign!  They find a new place to put it for every year of the festival! 

A cool building at Mass MoCA!  That's one of the art museum buildings.

Another cool building at Mass MoCA! 

The stage with the Wilco concert the first night! 

Timmy found a spotlight so he had to enjoy it! 

Mook, Kevin, Timmy, and Mo!  It was pouring rain, so we went to this very tree-shaded area for some cover! 

Timmy felt like dancing! 

The 2nd night! 

 Another Solid Sound Festival in the books!  We all had such a great time! Two more years til the next one!

Maine: Boothbay Harbor

The last Maine post!  So after we finished our hikes (including Beehive Trail) in the morning on our last day in Acadia, we drove towards Boothbay Harbor!  On the way to Boothbay, we stopped in Freeport, Maine at a brewery for lunch!  The brewery was Maine Brewing Company, and OH MY GOSH are they amazing!!  The brewery was seriously SO gorgeous and huuuuuge, and they had a pizza oven that was cooking up some seriously delicious pizzas.  We were starving after our morning of hiking, so we ordered TWO pizzas, and they were seriously some of the best pizzas I've ever had.

The outside of the brewery!

We also ordered a huge flight of beers so we could do a proper tasting!  We shared 8 small beers, and it was SO fun to taste all of their beers!  It was a great way to relax after all of our days in Acadia National Park.

There's the guy making the pizzas!  He was actually from a local bakery, so that pizza dough was AMAZING. 

A cool fountain they had in their table area

Their fridge area with all of their bottles for sale, and you'll notice that 1% For The Planet sign, because they donate 1% of all sales (and they have from the beginning of their brewery) to organizations to help the environment.  Pretty cool, huh? 

The bar area.  This place was so pretty! 

 After we'd tasted some amazing beers and eaten sooooo much pizza, we finished our drive to Boothbay Harbor!  We've been to Boothbay a few times, but never this early in the season!  It was kinda weird how quiet everything was!  We loved it, but the only bummer was that some of the restaurants and stores hadn't opened for the season yet!  We still had an amaaazing time, and we got to explore more of Boothbay than we'd seen before! We stayed there for two nights, and it was awesome.

The view from our seats at the bar of the little restaurant we went to for a lobster roll for Kevin!  The usual lobster roll place that Kevin looooves wasn't open for the season yet, so we had to search for other recommended lobster roll places!  This place was about a 15 minute drive, but it was adorable and the food was great!  I had clam chowder, which was delicious! 

A cute little restaurant called The Tugboat!

Beautiful Boothbay Harbor! 

This was the BnB we stayed at!  It was great, and the breakfasts were SO good.  

We had a GREAT time in Boothbay, and felt really relaxed and refreshed when we drove back to Philly on that Saturday! It was a great trip.  We were happy (as always) to see our Guinness when we got home though, because we definitely missed him like crazy!  I think he slept for like 2 days straight when we got him home.

We're already ready to go back to Maine!!  It's a really beautiful state. 

Acadia National Park - Part 3

Ok, last Acadia post!  

We woke up super early in the morning to go to Cadillac Mountain to watch the sunrise.  We had to set our alarms for like 4am or something (maybe earlier?  I can't remember exactly) because we had to be AT the top of Cadillac mountain by 5am for the sunrise. It was freeeezing cold, but oh my gosh there are no words to explain how beautiful it was.  Oh, and Cadillac Mountain is one of the first spots in the U.S. to see the sunrise!  Isn't that cool?? 

 After watching an amaaazing sunrise, we went into town to have breakfast, and then we went on a few more hikes! One of the hikes was over to Bar Island, because during low tide there's a little bar of land that appears so you can walk over to Bar Island from Bar Harbor!  You just have to keep an eye on the time when you're on the island, because if you stay there too long the tide will rise and you'll have to wait until the next low tide! Craziness.  It was really fun though! 

It's hard to see, but this picture was taken from Bar Island, so you can see the little bar of land over to the left, and across the water is Bar Harbor.  Not the best picture!!

After hiking back from Bar Island, we drove to the trailhead for the Bubble Rock trail.  Bubble Rock is a big ol' boulder that's balanced on the edge of a cliff!  The hike to the trail was pretty lovely.

Handsome McGee!  And that's Bubble Rock! There's more pictures so you can tell how big it is. 

There we go!  Kevin is standing to the right of it.  It's a pretty big boulder! 

Boulder Rock and Kevin again! 

Gorgeous view

 After a few more hikes and some hanging out in Bar Harbor for a bit, we went back to our campsite to hang out for our last night of camping!  We knew we were going to wake up pretty early to do the big Beehive Trail.

Perfection!

 In the morning we packed up all of our sleeping bags, tent, etc and drove to the trailhead for Beehive Trail!  Beehive is a big one, because there are lots of metal ladders and metal bars and stuff that you have to use to pull yourself up parts of the mountain.  We got a nice early start, and it was SO MUCH FUN.  There was only one part where I was like, "Hmm... I don't feel safe and steady right now", but I just needed a few extra seconds to figure out the best way to pull myself up, and then it was fine!  There were amazing views during the WHOLE hike, so that made it really fun too! 

This was like a barbecue grate that you had to walk on... In the next picture you can get a better view of where it was.  

Can you see where the barbecue grate is? This was after I had crossed it.  It's right in the middle of the picture. 

Look at that view! 

Look at that dropoff! 

 That was the end of our Acadia National Park adventures!  After we finished Beehive Trail, we started our drive to Boothbay!  I'll do one last post tomorrow to wrap up our Maine trip!