I returned yesterday from a day and a half in Rhode Island, traveling with my brother, sister and their spouses, after spending the weekend with them, my mother and my niece at my brother's in Connecticut. But this photo offering is from our trip the previous week to Maine. (Don't fret, Vermont, we're coming in September.)

On Saturday in Maine, we'd hoped to kayak, but fog descended as the sun rose, and we went to plan B, the second annual Addison-Harrington artists' tour, in which we bought tickets at the Addison town hall and visited some homes and gallery spaces nearby our home base in Jonesport. Many of our stops were thrilling, if not for the art than for the vistas, or the artists themselves.

I was particularly interested in pen-and-ink work by the son of Ken Graslie and would have purchased one, but Georgie wasn't as keen on it. All four of us — our friends Chuck and Katrina were our hosts — ended up talking with Ken as much about his bursting veggie garden as we did about his art, but we all enjoyed the encounter. I think we also were taken with Grace Synnott Anderson's quilts, and we enjoyed meeting Beth Ferriero, artist and proprietor of Gray Wolf Art Gallery, which had work from several of the artists whom we later visited.

But the reason for the post was a visit to the home and grounds of John McMurray, whose kinetic sculptures made of salvaged and repurposed materials spread across his seaside acreage and even into the sea itself. I wouldn't say all his work is beautiful, but he is prolific and creative in the extreme, and I'm grateful for his inventive perspective on reuse. Here are a few of the dozens of pieces he displays: