Visiting L.L. Bean: They Have Trout!

You kinda have to go to LL Bean if you're within striking distance of Freeport. There's this whole shopping mecca thing going on there, which is fun for us, because we're a good two hours from anything, even a Target. 

The light was so astounding on the afternoon we visited I just kept stopping and posing everybody against that indigo sky.

and the birches lit up like gold coins.

Gold and red looks so fine in low autumn light. Kind of a nice pair of kids if I say so myself. 

The Big Boot. We went to LL Bean to get Phoebe a pair of blue ones. She had a $50 gift certificate from her Aunt Lolly! I don't know if she's taken them off since, except to sleep. The child is immersed in all things Maine. 

LL Bean's lobby has a new trout tank that is something else. I am all for stores that do a little more for the shoppers. I like getting close up looks at trout. So this was a big hit with us.

 Brook trout. I love those flashy white fin stripes.

I hope I have these right. Trout aficionados please dive in if I don't. Pretty sure this is a brown trout (dark spots on a light ground, the opposite of the brookie above.) Thanks, Dr. Starship, for the easy ID tip!

The uber-cool thing LL Bean did was to install a bubble for humans. You crawl under a cutout in the tank cabinet and sit on a little stool in there and you're in the tank with the trout!

I didn't like that much at all. You can tell by my face that I'm bored. So were the kids.

A young brown trout. Man, they are beautiful.

And here's a rainbow trout. The iridescence was just incredible. It was so nice to see them alive and healthy, not packed under Saran on styrofoam. It's got to be kind of tricky to keep trout, who need cold, highly oxygenated moving water, this healthy in a tank, but they're doing a great job.

OMG trout right overhead!!

Just leave me here in the trout tank. These were pretty enormous fish, salmon-like. Well, after all they're salmonids. Trout are just small salmon.

I think this rainbow's getting enough to eat.

 

Liam, as always, cracking us up. I don't know how he knew the plexiglas would distort his nose. He just knew.

I'll admit it, I was a paparazzo that day. And every time I asked the kids to stop for a photo, I got the cutest clinch out of them. We miss our girl. Christmas can't come soon enough. I can't believe I said that. (I'm sort of a Christmasphobe). 

We're all ready to have that empty bedroom full again.

He greeted her every morning. I'd hear her call, sleepily, "MAAAAI. I need that smelly DOG." That was my cue to deliver the warm black and white bundle to her arms. They'd cuddle for a few precious minutes on weekdays, hours on weekends.

I never saw him sleep on her bed if she wasn't in it. Now he does, more and more often. 

 I know how you feel, little guy.

Thanks to Phoebe Thompson for the photos of me in the troutbubble.

And...RAIN CROWS ALERT!! Our band, The Rain Crows, performs Saturday, November 22, at The Adelphia Music Hall, 205 Second St., Marietta, Ohio. We start at 8:30 PM. Good for old folks like us!  We'll have the whole six-piece band, with Athens' fabulous John Borchard on pedal steel, dobro and guitar. Though we're busy writing and recording, we don't get to play out very much, so please, if you can make this one, do it! Listen to FREE samples of our rock/Americana/roots music at
this link and this one, too. If you don't want to hear us after that, well, we're doin' it rong.