Our 2025 Continued: October on

We spent the first week of October enjoying a Holland America cruise up the coast of Maine to New Brunswick Canada and back.

We fell in love with the trolls created from recycled materials by Danish artist Thomas Dambo at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens near BoothBay. He has many installations all over the world so click here for the map to find one near you. The other highlights for us were relaxing on our balcony, the Bay of Fundy, the Art Museum in Portland, Maine, and watching the Yankees beat the Red Sox in the wild card round of the playoffs in a comfortable bar area (armchairs, couches) with many Red Sox fans.

We seem to visit the Boston area often. It is close and it is where we met in 1972. We also have some good friends in Cambridge, Doug and Sue Myers, with a guest room. We stayed with them before the yearly gathering of Bart's Lyman Hall get together and Doug took us on his private tour of interesting areas on the Harvard campus. After the luncheon, we finally visited with another Choate friend and wife, Phil and Dottie Laughlin in Wellesley.

The middle of October is the best foliage time in Avon, Connecticut. Paul and Jack made a quick visit to see it and us. Meanwhile the product of my kitchen composter gets spread on my flower beds, so unbelievably my daylilies were still blooming! Of course I deadhead them as well.

This year, Kitty insisted on leaving for the West Coast before it got cold. The first day on the road we drove to see our friends Fred and Kathy Schenker near Pittsburgh on Halloween. We even saw a few trick or treaters (they are not allowed in our community in Avon). We got to scare some of Fred's visitors with our masks!

The next day we visited Bart's classmate, the artist Doug Cooper, at Carnegie Mellon in his studio. He then took us on a walking tour of his murals on campus. He uses vine charcoal to create his giant multi-dimensional murals. He also presented us with two copies (one for each home) of his latest book, Knowing and Seeing, about his work, his theories and his life.

Then we continued on over the border to Wadsworth, Ohio to see Kitty's cousins there. We stayed with Lori and Tim Wilkinson. Lori and Kitty have gotten close by being FaceBook friends. She is the daughter of Susan Murrell, Kitty's first cousin who was widowed earlier this year. It was important to Kitty to see Susan and give her a hug. We even went to the church her husband Tom used to pastor on Sunday. Bart thinks it was his first time in church since Kitty's wedding to Henry!