Ships Ahoy

     Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. I hope you're having a  good week so far.

      We've been out fishing and cruising in my husband's boat a few times this summer. So far this year we've passed some interesting boats. Well we always pass other boats, but for some reason this year a few have seemed more exciting to me for various reasons. For those of you who like ships and boats,  today's post is for you.

    This past Monday my husband and I went out fishing. As we went downriver towards the ocean this huge ship was coming up river in our direction.

  I don't know why some of the photos are so grey and some are not. I didn't change any camera settings while taking these photos. 😕

    I am a fan of the tug boats. I think if I was a boat instead of a person,  or better said, if I had to pick a boat that was most like me, it would be a tug boat.  

  This large ship  (below) was leaving the dock and going out to sea (I saw her out there later but couldn't get a photo), and as they untied it this little tug was holding the ship to the dock.

   Here's another big ship that was  tied up to a different dock. It was unloading salt at the locally famous Portsmouth salt pile.

    The cars on the road in the background are  going over  the river along the route 1A bridge.

   On the New Hampshire side of the river there are lots of big ships and some industry. On the Maine side of the river it is full of homes.  

   In this next photo you can see  the docks on the Maine side (the right) where there is a marina and the salt pile (on the left New Hampshire side) where the big ship is unloading.

   One of the smaller cruise boats that takes close to shore  tours around the area (and also explains what things are with their  history) is called the Heritage. We always say no boat trip is complete unless we see this boat. And every trip we see it at least once, but sometimes more than once.

     Some day we might even take a trip on it because I'd love to learn more of the local history.

   Speaking of history, the yellow house in the background is the Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion. It originally was the home of the Royal Governor of the British colony of New Hampshire named John Wentworth. When the colonists were stirring up anti-British rule, he fled in 1775. That left New Hampshire without someone in charge, so the colony drafted their own constitutional government. At this point, the other 12 colonies were still under British rule, but New Hampshire was not. We were the first place in the US to have self rule.

  

   Here's another difference between the Maine and New Hampshire side of the river. In the above photo you can see a submarine at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in for repairs of some sort.

   For years there has been a battle between which state the shipyard was actually in. Even though both sides  fight to save it whenever there are talks in Washington of making military facility cuts, its location comes down to taxes. Maine has state income tax, and New Hampshire does not.  Maine wants the income from the taxes; workers who live in New Hampshire don't want to pay the taxes. A few years back the courts decided that it was actually on the Maine side of the state line. They supposedly used old maps to come to that answer.

   Finally for today, can you see the boat on the left side of this lousy photo? This is actually a naval patrol boat that goes up and down in front of the shipyard. If you get too close (which has happened to us a couple of times since the fishing is quite good in that area and sometimes the current pushes the boat a little too close) they ask you to leave. It's a kind of scary vessel because it has a big machine gun mounted on the front.

   But sometimes, if the dogs are with us, the people running the boat just want to say hello the dogs too. Seriously. We are hardly threatening looking, especially with the 2 dogs. 😉

   I have a lot more marine vessel photos to share, but this post is long enough. Have a great rest of your day. 

  

Happy Weekend to You

     Hi everyone. Happy weekend to you. I hope you're having a wonderful weekend.

     Let me start today's post with a page in my summer journal for Chris' Hot August (Days and Nights) challenge at Art Journal Journey. It's not the most complicated page but for something so simple it has some various media, so I am also linking up to Creative Artiste Mixed Media Challenge. I'm also linking up to Gillena's Sunday Smiles.

    I covered the background paper with some ancient printed paper from back in my scrapbooking days. I rubbed a bit of green ink (TH)  very lightly over the page, especially the edges. I then used a darker pink ink (Versafine Clair) and an Adirondack chair image (?? Not sure who made that stamp). I added a 49 and Market acetate images, and also some cloth sticker clouds from Studio Calico. And finally I stamped the quotes (once again I'm not sure who made these). And that's all there is to that. 😏

   We've been having some lovely weather which was perfect for the niece's wedding yesterday. More about that in some other post.  However, we didn't get to go boating this weekend because of Hurricane Erin churning up the coast, much to my husband's and even my disappointment.  However, I have some other photos from a couple of weeks ago that I thought I'd end this post with. At least looking at photos  I'll get my water time this way. 😀

above- a couple of views of the red shed

below,  a water view of the "old" end of Portsmouth (NH)

I guess it wasn't a big kayaking day

   If you wonder why there is a British flag on this pole. That's because it's flying outside of the Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion where the first governors of this still then colony lived. The house (well most of the house)  in the photo below the flags. It's now a state park.

Here's a few seabirds.

Some lobster boats and a ton of lobster traps at one of the city docks

And finally, a bit of yoga on a paddle board.

Have a super rest of your weekend and start to the new week.

Tern Crazy

     Hi everyone. Happy weekend. Hope yours is going well. At my house we are in for a one day heat up, and then they predict (for now) that we'll be getting fall temperatures for a few days.  I'm excited for some slightly cooler temperatures for a few days and hopefully, some crisp nights for sleeping. 😀

    I'm also linking up to Gillena's Sunday Smiles. If you don't like birds you may not be smiling at this post. 

   Recently when we've gone out fishing in our boat, there  have been so many common terns flying around.  It makes me happy because I really enjoy watching them. They are  one of my favorite seabirds.

   In case you don't know what a tern is, here is a photo of one.  They are small and spunky (a bit like me- grin) and quite the acrobats  (not at all like me) too. 

    They also love to dive for small fish which they eat, and for some reason this summer there is so much  bait fish (like herring) in the water that the number of terns seems to be much higher than I remember it being other years. It's been such fun watching them, and even though I'm not sure my photos of them are all that fantastic, I thought I'd share some of them today.

    A couple of weeks ago we were anchored near a school of herring that the terns were going crazy for. I went up to the front of the boat to get some photos. I've been wanting to get a good diving photo of some of these birds,  and these are some of the better ones I've ever snapped.

       If the boat was steady I'd bring my "big" zoom lens, but since it's not in the nature of water to be solid (unless it's below 32 degrees F or 0 degrees C), I make do with my smaller zoom.

      When you go striped bass fishing, these flocks of birds are a sign that there might be some big fish in the water because they (the big fish)  could be there feeding on the little fish. Sadly for fishing this year there is so much bait fish that the stripers aren't biting on fishing lines. In this next photo there aren't only lots of terns but also some cormorants fishing.

    Right now the nestlings are still being fed by their parents even though they are flying around.

    Whoops, this is not a tern , but a type of seagull.

  And even though Alfred Hitchcock did not feature terns in his movie The Birds, there are so many terns around we've passed some scenes reminiscent of  that film. Luckily there has been no news of anyone being attacked by birds. 😏

  And with this last photo, I'll finish up my post. Wishing everyone a great rest of your weekend and week ahead.

It's Friday Again

   Hi everyone. Happy Friday. I'm here today to join Nicole for her Friday Face Off and also to join Gillena's Friday Lunch Break post.

   Today I have some more boating photos to share. There are lots of faces, but they're pretty small. I'll start with this party boat that we passed, each of us going in opposite directions.

    We also passed the Thomas Leighton filled with passengers heading out to the Isles of Shoals. (See this post if you're interested in what/where the Isles of Shoals is.)

    It was a gorgeous day, so lots of folks were out enjoying summer

in one way

or another.

And here's some faces that are easier to see.

It's not often we see a loon on the ocean in the summer. It's more common to see them on the lake at my Mother-in-laws home.

    For this week's dog photos, here's Miss Maddie. She never sits on our chairs. Hers is the blue one behind this white one. Of course seeing she's blind, we don't know if chose to try out this chair or if she mistakenly climbed onto the wrong chair. :)

       

    The funny part is that she couldn't get comfy on the chair with the arms because of those arms, so after moving around for about 15 minutes, she hopped off and went into the cabin.

    I'm not sure the cabin was up to her standards either. 😏 Here she is sticking her face out of the little cabin we have in the boat. This cabin is big enough for me to lay down but not my husband (and that's because I'm short). The ones who really like to lounge in there out of the sun are the dogs.  

    Finally, one more photo. Here's another one of those cranes at the Naval Shipyard. I counted even more of them than I did a couple of weeks ago. I don't know what it is about the cranes reaching up so tall, but they always catch my eye.

    I'm not sure if I'll have time to do a weekend post this weekend as we have a lot of things going on, so let me wish you not only a great weekend but a nice start to the new week (just  in case I can't find the time to post or even visit blogs).