​During our recent trip to Maine, in addition to visiting lighthouses along 200 miles of the Maine coastline, we also hiked all over Acadia National Park. From the Beech and Canada Cliffs, to the Seawall. From Sargeant Drive along the Somes Sound to Bass Harbor. From Pretty Marsh to Jordan Pond. In fact, the only part of Mount Desert Island that we didn’t visit was Bar Harbor because that’s where all the casual tourists flock.
 
In addition to the beauty of the mountains and coast, of particular note was the Asticou Azalea Garden of the Mount Desert Land & Garden Preserve which was designed to resemble a Japanese stroll garden. Having spent 16 days in Japan only 2 months ago we were impressed by how a much the garden, which was designed for a coastal Maine setting, looked like the gardens that we saw in Tokyo and throughout Japan.
 
You can see all the photos of our Adventures in Acadia on the Adventures/North America page.

​Well, now that Summer is in full swing, all the plants are growing like crazy here in New England; even the poison ivy (and it's cousins poison oak and poison sumac). So if you want to enjoy hiking and camping in the woods, but avoid getting a serious poison ivy rash what should you do?
 
The first thing that you need to know is that you don't get poison ivy rash from contacting a poison ivy plant - you get it because you didn't wash off the Urushiol oil that comes from contacting the plant or another object that contacted the plant.
 
Urushiol oil in poison ivy, poison oak and poison sumac is what produces a severe skin rash. Timely removal of the urushiol oil will prevent poison ivy skin reaction. Clean your skin within 2 to 8 hours of contact. When doing this, the most important thing is not the type of soap that you use - but that you use a wash cloth to apply vigorous friction to make sure that you get all the sticky urushiol oil off of your skin. To make sure that you do this it's a good idea to soap up and wash off 3 times.
 
Here's a great video from retired biomedical scientist Jim Brauker that clearly demonstrates the poison ivy problem and solution.

We just got home from a trip to Maine where, as a part of the trip, we visited seven of the larger active lighthouses (there are ~60 active lighthouses) along the Atlantic coast to include:
 
          1) Cape Neddick (Nubble) Lighthouse - York, Maine
          2) Cape Elizabeth and Cape Elizabeth West Lighthouses - Cape Elizabeth, Maine
          3) Portland Head Lighthouse - Portland, Maine
          4) Ram Island Ledge Lighthouse - Portland, Maine
          5) Pemaquid Point Lighthouse - Bristol, Maine
          6) Owls Head Lighthouse - Rockland, Maine
          7) Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse - Acadia National Park, Maine

If you want to learn more about the lighthouses in Maine here is a great website that has detailed information on 29 of the lighthouses:

     https://www.us-lighthouses.com/displaystate.php?StateID=12 

Normally we use 2 ¾” 00 Buckshot shells in our shotguns since they are “tactical” in nature (as opposed to being used for skeet shooting or hunting). However, recently we have been doing more 3-gun shooting, where 00 Buckshot is overkill when shooting at clay and paper targets.
 
Because of this we decided to try a few different types of #8 shot shells. The four types of #8 shells that we are trying out are:

If you want to read more about why #8 shot is better than 00 Buckshot for 3-gun shooting you might want to check out the detailed blog post about shotgun shells last November.

Stay tuned. We’ll let you know what we figure out after we’ve run a bunch of them through our shotguns.