The summer is finally coming to an end.  It was a good summer - not too wet and not too dry.  But, after September, fall moves in pretty fast on the coast of Maine.

We began the year with a return trip from Auburn and then dealt with two brutal storms a couple of days apart in January.  We went to Topsham in February and Austin, Texas in March to see our new granddaughter.  In mid-May we went to Auburn and returned to Maine right at the beginning of Memorial Day weekend.  On August 2, we went back to Austin where it was delightfully hot and dry.  There is something about that Texas dry heat to I like.  Three weeks ago we flew back to Auburn but not without a little problem.  I always take a bag of my favorite coffee on these trips and the TSA folks in Portland always pull me aside to inspect the coffee. But this time after inspection, they did not properly close my case and it popped open on the escalator and my beautiful Nikon 810 rolled and bounced down the stairs damaging the lens to the point of being unusable for use at the Fraternity event the next night.  The first two days in Auburn were consumed by repairmen at the house to fix the three heat pumps that were all on the fritz.  On Saturday morning I took the camera to the shop, Cameragraphics, and they were able to fix the lens while selling a new camera to me.  They have been telling me about mirror-less cameras for a while and they finally sold a new one to me - the Nikon Z6II.  It is a nice camera but quite different because it is small and has a tiny video screen for a viewfinder.  The auto-focus is different and I have not yet figured out hot to use properly. 

So, now we are preparing for another winter and perhaps one more trip to Auburn in December.  Looking ahead to Spring, I think we may try to get out to San Diego to see Dave and Carla.  It has been years since we made that trip.  Traveling with the new, smaller camera will be nice.