Early up - I packed last night so I might grab one more swim early this morning. Quietly I slipped off the dock and made my way around Joyce Island. It feels like an important ritual now, a centering way to start the day. We enjoyed our last breakfast with our fantastic hosts, and moped back to our cabins to bring our bags to the dock to be picked up by our endlessly helpful island staff. Walking away from this place is hard today, for us and the kids. How good to know that we'll be back again.

This was our first SwimVacation here in Maine - a place where most of our SwimVacation guides live and swim all year long. WE knew how great a place Maine is for swimming in the summer, but we knew we needed to find the perfect spot to bring our guests - a place where all of their needs would be met, and they could focus on the swimming and their families in the midst of one spectacular unspoiled lake. Taconnet has offered up a perfect venue for our Maine family adventure, and both state and island delivered.

For this, our first Maine trip, we kept the experience to 3 days and 4 nights. As we pulled away from the island today, we all realized we could have easily stayed a few more.

We swam this week. We worked on our strokes, we made the most of Maine's rich offerings. But I think what made it most special for me was sharing this experience with my family. Sometimes I wonder if my son will ever truly understand how lucky he is to live in a place like this. A place where he can run up a mountain and swim in a clear lake and eat good food and swing on a hammock all in one day. Tomorrow we'll wake up at home, eat a quart of blueberries for breakfast and maybe head to the beach. That's summer in Maine, and this is our time of year. And that's why Hopper just knew we needed to bring people here for a swim.

- Heather.

Maine 2011 - Heading Home

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