Another Memorial Day weekend has come and gone, and with it another unofficial start to summer. Unless you live here in New England, in which case it was a continution of "spring," what we've been optimistically been calling this season of temps in the 50s and almost daily rain. Some springs have been colder, and some wetter, but this may be the most irritating mix of the two in my lifetime.

Such weather led to some cabin fever, and a call by the future Mrs. Blogalicious to do something "fun." What wound up being fun was a day trip to Portland, Maine to see the Portland Sea Dogs of the Eastern League take on the Harrisburg Senators. Our hope, apparently buoyed by weather reports, would be that southern Maine would be less rainy than the Boston area.

The drive to Portland and our initial foray into Hadlock Field, home of the Sea Dogs, seemed to bear this out. However, the rain picked up steadily during our time there, to the point where not five minutes after taking our seats, the game was called. We now have tickets for a game against the Binghamton Mets on August 8, making this the earliest I've ever known what I was going to be doing on my birthday.

I will say from our brief visit that the stadium is pretty good, nothing special but at least better than some of the piles commemorated in photos along the concessions concourse. There is a touching yet sad double-A version of the Green Monster, complete with a Coke bottle and Citgo sign above it. Sadly, no seats are available for purchase on the wall.

With a newly-freed afternoon in Portland, we decided to drive down to the Old Port, the section of Portland down by the waterfront. We had a "cahn't get theyah from heah" moment where none of the roads seemed to go the direction we needed, but eventually righted ourselves. Not surprising for so crappy a day, not much was going on in the Old Port. We did spend part of our time looking in the shops, not a total loss given my purchase of a bobblehead moose.

What we wound up doing was taking a cruise among the islands of Casco Bay on the mail boat, the ferry that brings mail as well as passengers and goods to the islands. No mail today, of course, but there were a fair number of people going to and from the islands. We were one of two pairs of round-trippers, somewhat conspicuous with our lack of baggage.

While most of the islands play host to seasonal residents, there are year-round inhabitants as well, and I wonder how they cope with not being able to just get up and go when the mood strikes. I know that may be an odd sentiment for someone who can only answer that same call by walking, but the fact is that I can at least do that. I suppose it's something you either know from birth or develop skills to work with, but I can't see living that way for good.

In any event, it was a fun way to burn an afternoon, even if the weather was less hospitable than our last cruise to nowhere, a round-trip across the St. Lawrence between Quebec and Levis (sadly before we knew that our friends had famous forebears honored there, else we'd have gotten off the ferry and looked around).

From the ferry terminal it was off to Governor's, a local chain of restaurants that names burgers for current and recent holders of that office (and some historic ones as well). And then it was home, fighting through the "delays" that were warned about at toll booths and on the Maine Turnpike radio station but in reality did not exist. We did see a fair bit of traffic heading south as we were going north, so perhaps they'd set everything up anticipating the usual late departure. If there were any delays on that road today, they were more likely at noon than our early evening traveling hours.