Looks like this will be another lovely fall day here at Joe's Pond. I was up earlier than usual and got this picture of the sun breaking through the clouds on the horizon. Last night wasn't as cold as it has been and there wasn't a frost.

Before I forget, Fred found an interesting article about the 1927 flood and has posted it on home page. I'm going to find and post some pictures taken around Cabot that will illustrate perfectly what this article is saying. Perhaps later today.

We were with Bill and Diane Rossi, celebrating their anniversary (which is today!) last night at WilloughVale Inn in Westmore. The foliage up that way is much nicer than it is here. It was a beautiful evening and we all enjoyed our meal at the inn as well as the trip up. Diane drove up and although we knew the way, we used their Garmin direction finder. When we've been in our car, we have OnStar, so we were interested in the way each works. We got there with only one small glitch when Diane missed the turn in West Burke and headed for Crystal Lake, but we lost only a couple minutes.

On the way back, Fred was driving and we took Rt. 16 to Barton and then to East Hardwick, etc. Thanks to me, we lost about four minutes in Barton when I thought the Garmin was going to direct us down Rt. 5, so I had Fred take a wrong turn and we were one street away from where we should have been. It was dark. That's my excuse - besides, I haven't been that way for years.

We had a very nice evening - the waitstaff seemed in high spirits. We think that may be because the inn will close for the winter next weekend. The hostess told us they've had an exceptionally good season and indicated everyone is ready for a long winter's rest. The restaurant will reopen around Memorial Day.

Here's a slide show of our trip: To Willoughby Lake

Back at our own lake this morning, you can see there are very few leaves left on the trees. We must have had more wind here than they got up north. This picture was taken earlier this morning, and now the clouds have evaporated and there's mostly blue sky. There's a brisk wind that's going to finish stripping the remaining leaves from the trees. I'll be raking them up later today to put on the garden. I'm not quite ready to mulch my flower beds yet, but will do that soon. I use black plastic to cover the leaves in the vegetable garden, but don't cover the flower beds and this windy weather makes it difficult to keep leaf mulch in place on them. I'll try to time doing it just before a good rain. Or snow. Whichever comes first.

We're wishing the Bill and Diane a lovely anniversary day today.