I’m putting in a request early for some normal summer weather for the two weeks after next week. I figure that gives whoever is in charge of these things time enough to get all the lousy humidity, thunderstorms, and heat pushed out to sea and pull in some Maine summer. It’s time, isn’t it?

We got one normal day last weekend after a cold front swept through late Saturday and left behind a sparkling Sunday.

I had a chance to be a spectator for the annual Petit Manan Yacht Club’s regatta. They set up their course to pass right in front of my parents’ summer place on Baldwin Head. The eight sailboats livened up Narraguagus Bay and made for conversation and speculation as they made their way down the bay and back up and then repeated the course.

The family and neighbors pulled up a bench, cracked a cold one, and watched the fun through binoculars. Puffy white clouds echoed billowing sails, and blue skies mirrored the bay.

Since yucky heat and humidity had pretty much squashed my desire to suit up and paddle, I figured sitting next to the ocean and sipping a cold beer was the next best thing. Saturday had been sticky and hot for the Milbridge Days parade. From what I could see the most popular floats were the ones that launched frozen ice pops into the crowd and one with a wading pool from which much water was splashed onto grateful spectators.

After the parade I walked back to my vehicle and passed an Elvis act, a lone singer dressed in black representing the King in his later years. He looked dreadfully hot in his black wig as he moaned to a couple of spectators across the street.

Paddling on Fifth Machias Lake

I heard from Tess Ftorek late Wednesday. (She’s the one who challenged me to do the Washington County Community College polar dip three or four times.) She e-mailed me to say she, three friends, and a dog had spent a glorious day on Fifth Machias Lake earlier this week – and she sent photos to prove it. They took their kayaks up the outlet into the lake, crossing over one beaver dam.

“It was a GORGEOUS paddle,” she wrote. “The weather was warm but not unbearably so as there was a cloud cover. The sun broke out from time to time and once we had a little sprinkle. We stopped to picnic on one long sandy beach and then stopped at another to swim. We only saw two people all day. We saw lots of moose and deer tracks in the sand – and one moose, one bear and several rabbits on the ride out.”

(I think she sends me these reports to make me jealous.)

“High bush blueberries were plentiful. We ate them by the handful. We also munched on some blackberries and Donna found some chanterelles to top off the day. Our only regret was that we hadn’t brought gear to spend the night. We are plotting and planning a trip for later in the season.

“Life is good,” she wrote.

Makes me want to plan a trip, too.

Green Lake hatchery open house

Members of the Green Lake staff and Friends of Green Lake National Fish Hatchery will hold their third annual open house at the hatchery on Route 180 in Ellsworth from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Aug. 26.

There will be a fish tagging demonstration by NOAA Fisheries, a “Get Hooked on Fishing” event (a live fishing event for the kids), country singer Jimmi Barnes, and hatchery tours. There will also be displays by the University of Maine Graduate Studies Program, Maine Department of Environmental Protection, the Friends of Cove Brook, the Downeast Salmon Federation, a display on Green Lake Sunapee Trout, invasive species, and the Maine Warden Service’s “Wall of Shame.” For more information call Green Lake National Fish Hatchery at 207-667-9531.

Free trees

Feeling a little blue? Want to? Maybe you’d like to have 10 free Colorado blue spruce trees? The National Arbor Day Foundation wants you. Join up during the month of August and you’ll receive the trees free. They’ll be shipped to you for planting between Oct. 15 and Dec. 10 along with planting instructions.

The 6- to 12-inch trees are guaranteed to grow or they’ll be replaced.

They’re yours for a $10 membership contribution sent to Ten Blue Spruces, National Arbor Day Foundation, 100 Arbor Ave., Nebraska City, NE 68410, no later than Aug. 31. You can also go online at www.arborday.org.

Wooden canoe festival

One of these years I’m going to get to the annual Wooden Canoe Festival in Medway. This year marks the 10th anniversary of this event. It will be Aug. 12 at the Medway Recreation Complex, Route 157 in Medway beginning at 8 a.m. and ending after the 9 p.m. fireworks.

In between there is registration for the MaCKRO white-water canoe race (8 to 9 a.m.); canoe poling techniques by Jerry Stelmok at 10 a.m.; and canoe building with Rollin Thurlow at 11 a.m. During this time period Randall Robert, guide and author, will sign his book, and there’ll be a silent auction for a 1942 Carlton canoe with original canvas (no leaks). The start of the MaCKRO race is at 11 a.m. The boat yard will also be open and you can shop for a used canoe.

At 1 p.m. Dave Mussery will perform folk music; at 2 p.m. Mark Miller and Brian Mason will perform music (the race should be done around this time, too); at 3 p.m. Stelmok will again demonstrate canoe poling and there’ll be a fly casting demo; at 4 p.m., more canoe-building techniques with Thurlow are on tap. At 5 p.m. there’s spaghetti along with music by Martin Swinger. At 6 p.m. the canoe coffee table and kayak drawings will be held and the silent auction canoe winner will be announced. At 9 p.m. settle in for the fireworks.

Bear cam

Here’s your chance to see what very few humans get to see every year, and you can do it from the comfort of your home. The McNeil River bears are the star attraction of a new Web cam that has been put online.

Alaska’s 114,000-acre McNeil River State Game Sanctuary is a place only some 250 people per year get to visit on a lottery basis. An Associated Press story earlier this week quoted Mike O’Meara, project manager for the Pratt Museum in Homer, across Cook Inlet from the sanctuary, as saying about first-time viewers: “The first thing they have to say is ‘Oh, this is live!’ That intrigues them. Then they really get wrapped up in watching the bears. A lot of them are struck in how the bears interact and communicate with each other,” he said.

The “bearcam” is hidden in a fake rock near a falls in the river where the bears congregate to fish. From there the microwave signal travels from the camera to the museum through a series of repeaters. The signal is fed to servers in Seattle and published on the National Geographic Web site, where viewers can access it online in real time (that is if your computer is a bit more savvy than mine here in the salt mine). Check out www.ngm.com/wildcamgrizzlies and follow your instincts and the instructions you’ll find there. If your computer is anywhere near up to date, you may get a glimpse of the McNeil River grizzlies. If not, while you’re on the site, you’ll be able to read about the great beasts.

Good trail eats

I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the more I have to watch what I consume. I’ve spent the past few months sweating off years of indiscretions in the eating department. I have a little more to go, but in the meantime I’ve begun to look closer at what I stuff in my mouth.

Part of that wariness has been driven home by my wife, who has been successful in her efforts to shed some pounds through exercise and a Weight Watcher’s guide that calculates just how “bad” some foods are in their “point system.” You get only a certain number of points per day, and some foods can really eat up your quota.

Anyway, I don’t claim to understand it all, I’m just developing a passive interest in it all. For the time being, I’m watching things like fat, sugar, and salt.

Which takes me to an article I’d like to point out to you. It’s one of the “Paddling Articles” on Paddling.net, a Web site that sends out a weekly newsletter with all sorts of interesting paddling-related information. If you haven’t checked it out and paddling is in your blood, you owe it to yourself to take a look. There are new product reviews, a classified section, articles, and way too much to mention.

What caught my eye this week was an article on granola bars, those “healthy” snacks we’re told are so good for us. Turns out that’s not always the case, the article points out. Almost all commercial bars “contain way too much sugar,” the author, Anne L. Desjardins, says. They also have quite a bit of fat (particularly for their small size), and they don’t contain enough fiber.

The author suggests that making your own bars is one solution to the perfect snack and provides a couple of recipes at the end of the article that I think even I could cobble together. One is for peanut butter granola bars that have rolled oats, whole wheat pastry flour, liquid honey, natural peanut butter, organic canola oil, cranberries, vanilla extract, an egg, a pinch of cinnamon, and a pinch of salt.

The other is lemon granola bars that have wheat flour, wheat germ, rolled oats, soy protein powder, unsalted sunflower seeds, a pinch of salt, dry dates, dry apricots, 2 eggs, juice and zest of lemon, maple syrup, and organic canola oil.

Check out the recipes at www.paddling.net under the articles section.

Jeff Strout’s column on outdoor recreation is published each Saturday. He can be reached at 990-8202 or by e-mail at jstrout@bangordailynews.net.