August 17th and 18th: More Beach, Then Home

Mark and I still had a little time left before we had to head back to Portland, so Uncle Robert took us to see the small beach they'd found near the rental house.

I had no idea that Totman Cove even existed! Turns out, we could have gone here when we stayed at the other rental house a few years ago, too. Oh well.

We wandered around a little bit. It was low tide, so the water was really far out and pretty shallow.

The sand had neat ripples from the waves.

You could walk pretty far out and still only be in up to your knees.

Some of the little pools of water were really calm and almost perfectly reflected the trees and sky.

After a little while we went back to the house, said our goodbyes, and drove back to Portland. It would have been nice to stay longer, but we had to get back home early the next morning. At least we got to spend a little time in Maine this year!

We stopped at Otto's to grab some pizza when we got back to Portland, then hung out, watched some Olympics, finished packing, and went to bed. We managed to get to bed at a fairly reasonable hour, which made the early (4am!) alarm a little easier to deal with. Thankfully, our Airbnb was only a few minutes from the airport. We dropped off the rental car, zipped through security, and by 6am...

...we were already on the airplane, ready to go home.

Turns out the key to success with American Airlines is leaving at butt o'clock in the morning, before they have a chance to mess everything up. We pushed back on time and taxied to the runway.

I had to smile when we passed this C172 in the runup area.  :)

We were first in line for takeoff. Goodbye, Maine!

It seemed like we stayed pretty low for a while after we departed. I remembered flying past this inlet thing last year in my own plane when we flew home.

I had a super tasty airplane breakfast...

...then started to doze off right as we flew into the clouds.

The flight was only about an hour, and I woke up again as we were coming up on the Chesapeake Bay.

The final at DCA wasn't very long, and we didn't have to fly very far south to join the river for the approach. I tell planes to 'join the river south of the bridge' all the time, so it's always fun to actually see it in person.   :)

A whole bunch of crazy S-turns later (I have no idea what the tower was doing!), we were on the ground.

Hello, DCA!

We made it back on time, and I even had time for another nap after we got home and before I had to be at work that afternoon. Working 3-11 after getting up at 4am made for a very long day, but the extra sleep definitely helped. Aside from the frustrating start, it had been a very fun weekend!