We had an interesting day with Fred's cousin and her friend, Kate, from Rhode Island by way of Newark Pond. We only see them once a year, usually, unless there's a family event and Ora is there, so we always have a lot of catching up to do. Ora is working on a book about cats, so she took lots of pictures of Woody. He loved all the attention and posed nicely for her. He isn't a bit camera shy - or people shy!

After lunch we took them for a ride on some Cabot back roads. I needed to check time and mileage between schools for the tour on August 14th, so we took them to all the school buildings still standing in town. We made the trip in a little over an hour, and that was with several stops to take pictures and to chat with people. We went from Cabot Plain into the village and up to the West Hill School, then Lower Cabot, Read School (only a marker there) on Urban Road off of Danville Hill, then took Last Road to Rt. 2. That might have been a bad choice and I'm not sure I will ask the bus driver to go that route. It does come out right at the old South Cabot school house, now a camp, but the road is very narrow and I'm not sure even two cars could meet, let alone a car and a school bus, and not many places to pull off or turn around. I think I'll stick to the Danville Hill Road. It comes out on Rt. 2 in East Cabot, but it's only a couple miles to the South Cabot Schools.

At the East Cabot School, we met the present owners, Annette and Herb Little, who have owned it for nine years. They were very gracious in offering to give the four of us a tour and seemed excited about my bringing the tour group to visit them on the 14th. They've done a beautiful job of renovating the old school building. It was built around 1886, and closed in 1949. It was sold at auction to Frank O'Connor for $1,025. It has had several owners since that time and now it doesn't look much like a school building either inside or outside - it's a very small, comfortable home. Some of the floor is the original narrow hard wood, and in one of the closets, the original old boards are still visible, but mostly it's modern, light and homey. The row of big "school house" windows have been replaced with more efficient, double-hung ones, and the large school room is now partitioned into a comfortable living room, bedroom and large bathroom. I'm guessing where the eat-in kitchen is was the entry hall and cloakroom area when it was a school. That's Ora and me on the left, talking with Herb and Annette Little outside their home.

I had some interesting loon news from Helen Morrison today. She was inquiring about our loon family and hadn't known about the second nesting pair here. This is what she wrote:
Lyford [Pond] also has two nesting pairs, one with double chicks. I think that is the first time in memory loons have nested there. The population certainly is going up and they are resorting to untried areas.

I also had a message from Chico Carcoba today. I don't hear from him often since he isn't involved with tallying our Ice Out Contest now, but he does keep in touch and it's always nice to hear from him. He has a cottage on Woodbury Pond, but he always said he thinks Joe's Pond has a great bunch of people here - he was sort of an honorary Joe's Ponder, having logged in tickets for us for so many years. He apparently keeps track of other area lakes, too. He sent this: http://grotonpond.com/
ANOTHER GOOD WEB SITE,LIKE YOURS. CHICO

I checked it out and it is very nice. Lots of good information there.