Introduction
Last summer Shannon bought a yellow Anas Acuta kayak from a man who had kayaked all up and down the east coast. He was getting on in years and was no longer kayaking so he was selling his kayak and giving away various kayak gear. Along with the kayak he gave her some used kayak clothing, a few kayak trinkets and a book "Kayaking the Maine Coast." Shortly after she bought the boat she and I started talking about doing this trip to Maine. She left the book at my house through the winter and spring which gave me lots of time to read about the Maine Island Trail and the different kayaking options along the Maine coast.
Shannon wanted to go to Maine to see seals. Shannon loves seals. She dreams about seals. I think in a previous life she was a seal. So in planning the trip I tried to focus on areas that mentioned seals. I wanted to paddle the Deer Isle Archipelago. A few kayaking friends had done this section of the coast of Maine and I was mesmerized by their photos. So we planned our trip to focus on two areas the west side of Mt. Desert Island, which is a known pupping area for seals, and the Deer Isle Archipelago outside of the town of Stonington, Maine.
I usually do a blog report on my regular website http://blog.purplemirage.net. But since this trip was so long I decided to give it a separate website. And I had this magazine template just waiting for an application. The trip report is broken up into Chapters. To some extent the Chapters follow our journey but it's also arranged by topic. The photo albums are grouped within the Chapters.
On a technical note, the photo albums are not viewable in Internet Explorer (IE) 6 but they display perfectly in IE 7 and all the other browsers, like Foxpro. There is a conflict with the way the thumbnails are formatted. For that reason I recommend upgrading to IE 7 if that is your browser choice. I also created a Photo Index page of all the photos which is viewable in all browsers because it was created with a different software package. But it's just as easy to upgrade to IE 7 ... and it's a much better browser than IE 6.
Maine was an incredible kayaking destination and it was a great trip. I hope you enjoy reading about it as much as we enjoyed experiencing it.