Doña Amelias, we stopped at the Austin American-Sentinel for the nightly flight of the bats. That’s right: bats! Check out your on-the-spot reporter’s spiffy bat-umentary for the full story.

Several days after arriving home, it was time for our annual camping trip to Baxter State Park with our son Sam and Nancy, Jay and Jon. The photo at right shows the ridge line of boulders we climbed down along the Katahdin Stream Trail from Mt. Katahdin’s Baxter Peak. We were all hurtin’ units afterwards. There’s just nothing like c-r-r-unching your toes into the front of your boot with every step.

Please peruse my summer 2006 photos, and click the links below for my other sites.

-Jeff Frankel

Never again…

will I complain about Maine summer heat. A 4-day visit to San Antonio in mid-August quickly revised my thinking on that subject, let me tell you!

The purpose of the trip was to visit our daughter Hannah, who relocated to SA with Matt DelRossi in preparation for a service year with City Year San Antonio, an AmeriCorps program. (Why San Antonio? —She wanted to see what the southwest is like.)

San Antonio’s big tourist attraction is the River Center, a smart collection of restaurants, cafes and hotels strung along a tributary of the San Antonio River that was dug through the business district for that purpose. But the historical heart of the city is the Alamo (photo left), which stands smack dab in the middle of what grew up to be modern San Antone.

A day trip to Austin resulted in the most memorable part of the trip (aside from seeing Hannah, of course)! After a relaxing afternoon at Bonita Spring and a delicious dinner at