Driving the 1200 miles (21 hours) from Lexington Kentucky was about the limit of our road tolerance. We drove till we dropped the first day - at a campground in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts. Then on to the "down east" coast, arriving at the little burgh of Union to register at the NSS campground. We scored a great campsite in a small grove of trees, laughing to ourselves that all the other poor folks would have to bear the blazing sun out in the fairground fields. The joke was on us, however. That evening when the breezes died down, our cute little grove became assault headquarters for the squadrons of oversized Maine mosquitoes. A huge can of industrial strength DEET, two citronella candles and four mosquito coils later, we managed to reduce the attack to a minor sortie. The evening improved further with the plaintive cries of loons in the nearby lake.

The facilities for the convention this year were very nice. The Camden Regional High School is akin to an upscale university structure, and is convenient to the local points of interest at Camden and Rockland. Both Camden and Rockland are attractive bay towns, with thriving marine commerce and picturesque architecture. Experiencing the cool ocean breeze and local flavor of Camden finally made us feel like we were on vacation.

After the initial presentations, sessions, and vendor perusals at the school, the big kickoff Howdy Party was the destination of the evening. Fresh Maine lobster and homemade blueberry pie were the specialties. And all us beer snobs were grateful that a microbrew porter was one of the featured taps on the beer truck. The party was held at the Snow Bowl, a ski resort just outside of town. The highlight of the evening was the chair lift that whisked lobster-filled cavers up Ragged Mountain for incredible views of the Maine countryside and ocean. Many old and new friends chatted away till the party moved on back to the Union campground and continued (for some) until dawn - which was at the ungodly hour of 4:00 am in that part of the world!

On Tuesday, after the Congress of Grottos meeting where John gladly stepped down from the chairman post, and after the geology sessions, a sailboat ride was in order. The convention arranged with a local outfitter to take every attendee on a free boat ride during the week. Leaving from Rockland Harbor, the 1-hour tour gave us newbie sailors a fun sample of the high seas. Another boat ride on a larger vessel, the Monhegan, was arranged for Wednesday, and a crew of over 120 NSS folks partied on the coastal tour from Rockland Harbor to Camden Harbor. After our sailboat ride, we had quite a dining experience at a little dockside restaurant called Contes where the lobster met Tuscany, and it felt like we should have been perched on the Mediterranean instead of the Atlantic.

Wednesday was the day for the exploration sessions, which are some of the most interesting presentations for NSS cavers. National and international cavers discussed all the latest big discoveries and updated us on ongoing exploration projects. Back at the campground, the Speleolympics was going strong. Later in the day, Acadia National Park beckoned us away - up the coast through Bar Harbor and onto Mt. Desert (pronounced "dessert") Island.

The day was waning, so we took a short but spectacular climb up a granite monument called the Beehive, where the trail consisted in large part of metal handrails and ladder rungs bolted into the sheer rock. The views of the ocean and coastline were amazing, and we could see a few sea caves dotting the rugged coast here and there. Another loop hike took us down along the coast itself, by Sand Beach where the sand was made up exclusively of shell fragments, and out onto Great Head (false advertising - no cute rangers in sight anywhere). The Great Head trail took us around by a sea cave that we tried to reach. The tide was coming in as we were hiking, so the final push to get into the cave stopped where the crashing water blocked the way. We got some good views of the entrance, and we later learned that the cave was about 40 feet deep, not too shabby by Maine standards. We drove back toward the campground and the traditional Wednesday night party in a severe thunderstorm that knocked out power to all of Acadia and a large portion of the coast. It was strange driving down the coast in the pitch black, half expecting a moose to be blocking the way whenever a flash of lightning revealed the landscape around us.

Thursday was our annual Stonewall business meeting, and we had a couple of new attendees in addition to the old guard folks that always manage to show up. John C. gleefully accepted reelection to the Co-Chair position after the arm-twisting was to no avail. We finalized the wording for another ad in the NSS news, and discussed our plans for the web site and upcoming trips to Alabama and Butler Cave, Virginia. Other than our meeting, Thursday was a slow day, and we took the time to check out all the other things that the convention had to offer. There are all types of 'salons', or contests, for cave-related material. There are showings of all sorts of things like maps, photographic prints, newsletter covers, t-shirt designs, patches and emblems, videos, and artwork. It's enlightening to peruse all the material to see what other NSS members and grottos are doing. The favorite salon of the week is shown Thursday evening. The slide salon features all the best cave-related photographs that are submitted to the NSS for the year. It's a great way to just sit back, relax, and enjoy the caving experience through other people's eyes, and this year's slides were spectacular as usual.

Finally on Friday we got to do one of the required activities on my personal list. Driving back up to Acadia, we got on a half-day solo sea kayaking tour. We really got lucky and were the only ones on the trip, so our guide decided to take us much further than most people usually go. We started the trip in Bar Harbor, at Bar Island, and after adjusting all the bells and whistles on our kayaks we were on our way to the Porcupine Islands. There are four Porcupine Islands in Frenchmans Bay - Sheep Porcupine, Burnt Porcupine, Long Porcupine, and Bald Porcupine. We paddled around all four of them, and even got out to a small, protected island called The Hop, which is almost all the way across Frenchmans Bay. It was an incredible trip, with the 3-4 foot swells just challenging enough for us. Huge cliffs, crashing waves, big sea caves, and a whole bunch of playful porpoises really made the trip one of my favorite convention achievements.

We made it back from the kayaking trip just in time to grab a plate and partake in the final banquet event back at the school. The food was great, and everyone got a chance to socialize with the incredibly diverse caving community one last time. The annual NSS awards are handed out during the banquet. There were presentations for NSS Fellows, special awards for things such as conservation, exploration, scientific research, and other important accomplishments; the change in NSS officers (welcome new NSS president Scott Fee!); and the passing of the convention hat to next year's organizers. Next year's convention will be held in Porterville, California, next to Sequoia National Park - 4.5 hours south of San Francisco.

With the convention officially over, we realized we never got into a cave! The horror! We decided to rectify the situation on our return trip by participating on one of the featured post-convention trips. After driving back through Massachusetts, where I finally saw a moose (yay!), we arrived in Schoharie in New York State. Emily Davis, who many of us know and who runs Speleobooks, hosted a bunch of cavers at her property there. Near Emily's place are three major NSS preserves - the Barton Hill karst preserve, the Schoharie Cave preserve and the McFails Cave preserve.

Of all the NSS caves in the area, McFails is by far the best. It is the biggest cave in the northeast, and is a big cave even by TAG or Kentucky standards with almost 7 miles of mapped passage. It features a 70' waterfall entrance drop, and with the water temps in the 40s a wetsuit was a requirement. It was over 10 years since I had done McFails before with Scott Jones, so the trip seemed almost new to me. We joined up with Gerald Moni from Tennessee and were led into the cave by Ed Lucas. And at the last minute, 20-something ex-championship wrestler muscleboy Kyle J. joined the trip.

After the short hike by the karst features on the property, and after rigging the Acks Shack entrance as a precaution, we made our way into the small wet canyon entrance and set up the drop. You haven't experienced great vertical caving until you've rappelled and climbed with a waterfall pounding on your head! With everyone safely down the rappell, we followed the water down a very long, perfectly linear joint passage, negotiated two cable ladder drops and waded on to the first junction. At the junction, we took a short side trip to view some nice formations and helictites that were a nice bonus.

The main passage of the cave starts out as walking canyon about 10 feet high and gets continuously higher until the ceiling is lost in the darkness and sinuous ledges overhead. McFails is a very nicely decorated cave, with big, pristine flowstone decking the walls in many places. An oddity of the passage was a narrow white travertine stripe running down the center of the water channel for most of the way. With the constantly flowing water, we didn't see how the calcite could have been deposited there, and it gave the impression of a winding highway as we ran through the shallow water and jumped deep potholes.

We turned around at a big area called the Waterfall Junction, where we looped back around on ourselves through some chilly water crawls. The passage was getting much bigger at this point, and much more huge cave lay ahead of us. In the interest of time and hypothermia, we almost ran back through the water passages. Gerald seemed immune to the cold and took his sweet time on the way out, so we stopped at various places and climbed around to check out the nooks and crannies.

The rope climb back out of the cave was the biggest challenge. There were two ropes rigged. The first was directly in the waterfall, but gave a direct climb with no rebelay switchover. The other rope was rebelayed out onto the pit wall at a bolt that required crossing while dangling over the pit. Deciding to take the wet adventure instead of the technical one, all of us except Ed climbed in the waterfall. It was flowing enough so that breathing was difficult in a few spots. No stopping on this climb! We all made it out without incident, however, and my rope got a needed cleaning from the experience. Saying our farewells to new friends and old, we drove the final 12 hours back to Kentucky, pondering what the NSS convention in California might have in store for us next year.