here come the visuals

and the story, of course. where to begin?

well, I left here about 5pm on Friday, and trucked up to Fredericton to meet Erin and Ryan for the drive. We took my car, since otherwise we would have only been able to bring Ryan's golf clubs. We ended up leaving a bit later than we had planned, around 9, because we had to get some supper and snacks before we could head out. We stopped in Bangor for the night, since between the crazy drivers and the moose on the road, driving after midnight didn't seem like a very safe plan.

We left again in the morning and continued on to North Conway, seeing lots of this sort of thing along the way. Once we arrived, I snapped some more pics of leaves, since that's what I was surrounded by. Very beautiful, as has been said before, but honestly, not better than the views we get around here. Sure, the mountains helped, but the foliage itself was on par.

Sunday we went horseback riding, and I was able to get some lovely pictures along the way, despite the best efforts of my horse, Moe. I'm fairly sure he didn't like me, he kept walking as close as possible to the trees in an effort to brush me off. I think. He also tried to pick fights with the horse in front of me. He'd get really close to him and then I'd reign him back, to which he'd shake his head back and forth, slow down a bit, and then speed up again. He almost got pooped on, but that was no deterrent. The only thing that smartened him up, and scared the crap out of me, was when Cochese turned around and bared his teeth at my horse. No real fight, but there was definite possiblilty. Anyway, at some point my camera got switched off the action man setting, so I ended up getting a lot of shots like this. I blame Moe, he wouldn't hold still at all. It was a good time though, very relaxing. My ass is a bit sore, but I think it was worth it. They wouldn't let me ride this guy because we were all beginners. I was sort of bitter. He was a beauty, big big horse. My cousin and I have decided we're going to buy a horse. Somehow.

We ate out at a fun seafood place on Saturday night, and I ate the better part of my meal before noticing this monstrosity behind me. It's made out of lobster shells, and I think it's super creepy. I moved it so it was looking at Erin instead of me, which was better. I had very tasty, very thick clam chowder, with oyster crackers. Mom said she's going to bring me some of those, because I can't find them here.

A couple of random pictures for you. The 2nd one is from the Olive Garden parking lot. I thought it said "GLMR", but upon closer inspection, it may say "CLMR", which has a different spin I guess. We stopped at Olive Garden for lunch on the way back, and had slow service but delicious food. I so wish they'd build one closer to us here.

Not much else to report really, got to see the family, which is always nice, ate good food, which is great too. Slept on a hideabed, not so much fun there. Tried Smirnoff twisters, which of course are malt beverages and not vodka beverages in the US, but still remarkably tasty. I had orange, raspberry, and cranberry to go with the turkey. I wanted very much to stop at duty free and get myself some booze, and some for Grant's mom, but we went a different way over the border, and the duty free shop is a gas station, and is not labelled as the duty free shop, so we missed it. yarg.

I'm really tired now, I've updated this page and my family's page and cropped and resized a bunch of pictures, so I'm going to eat and nap a bit. a bientot.