Month: October 2018

By Jim.

Where has the time gone?  We knew that the New England leg of our trip would be a whirlwind, and we were right.  As a result, we’re behind on our postings.

We got to Boston (Foxboro, actually, which was the closest RV park we could find) on October 9, when the whole area was angst-ridden about the Red Sox-Yankees American League Division Series. Nobody does baseball-related angst more acutely than Boston does, and we arrived just in time to watch a taut, down-to-the-last-play Red Sox win.

Wednesday, October 10, was our much-anticipated trip to the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.  It’s magnificent.  The building was designed by I.M. Pei – Jackie’s choice at a time when Pei was relatively unknown.  “He was so full of promise, like Jack,” she said; “they were born in the same year. I decided it would be fun to take a great leap with him.”

What a leap it was.  The Library is located on Cape Cod Bay, just south of downtown Boston.  

It exudes class and the dynamic optimism of the 60s, which felt painful at this time when we have a President who has created a climate of crassness and retrogression.

It also recalled a time when Presidential words inspired, instead of causing fear and agitation.
One of our best ad-libs of the trip was deciding Friday morning to go to Newport, RI.

A century ago, Newport was the capital city of the Land of the Robber Barons.  The amazing ocean-front mansions (the Vanderbilts and the Astors actually called them “cottages” at the time) are still there, but it’s now a vibrant coastal resort town with plenty of sights, galleries and restaurants catering to the proletariat.

We walked the entire Cliff Walk Friday afternoon, which took about four hours.  It’s immodestly beautiful…and the surf was up!

When we got back to the car after our walk, we had another You Can’t Make This Stuff Up moment – Ginny bumped into one of her old Weston friends, Liz Montelli, on the beach next to where we were parked.  

Liz and her husband, Andy, opened up their beautiful home to us and we had a wonderful time together Saturday morning.  Ginny will have more to say in a separate post about this and other personal connections she made this week.

Speaking of wonderful times, we were taken out on the town Friday night by Matt Cohen, one of my son Pete’s best friends.  

And it is one great town!

After that, Connecticut beckoned!

All I could see from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood;

I turned and looked the other way,

And saw three islands in a bay.

Maine poet Edna St. Vincent Millay summed up her home state pretty well with that one.

Maine has at least its fair share of fun facts.  It’s the only state in New England that didn’t become a state in the 18th century.  It seceded from Massachusetts, which required the consent of the Massachusetts legislature in 1819, then was grated statehood the following year as part of the Missouri Compromise (by which Missouri was admitted to the union as a slave state, thus keeping equal the number of slave and free states).  Maine is the only state in the country that borders only one other state (New Hampshire).  Alaska and Hawaii border no other states and every state but Maine in the lower 48 abut at least two others.  Maine produces 99% of the nation’s blueberries and 90% of its lobsters.  It’s the easternmost state and the  northernmost of the lower 48.

For purposes of our trip, the funnest fact is that Maine’s coastline is longer than California’s, if you count all the squiggles – 3,478 miles to 3,427.  There are lots of squiggles – inlets, coves, bays, harbors, plus 3,166 off-shore islands.  

After coming over the mountains out of New Hampshire, our first stop was Belfast, a genuinely charming little town about halfway up the coast.

Our first full day there, we teed it up at the beautiful Samoset resort, a few miles south of Belfast.  The weather and the setting were special.

After golf, we treated ourselves to our first lobster dinner of the trip at Young’s Lobster Pound, a classic Down East joint with a view of Belfast across the Passagassawakeag River (no, I haven’t been drinking and typing – that’s really how it’s spelled).

Sunday, we got a bonus visit from Gwen, who celebrated her new job by flying from San Diego to join us for a few days before settling into full-time employment.  Mom was especially happy about all of this!

During a spell of cruddy weather, we explored Belfast and its harbor…

discovered a long-lost family enterprise…and were tempted to buy a Brett Kavanaugh Christmas ornament.

Wednesday, we drove another hour up the coast to Bar Harbor and the glorious Acadia National Park.

We tried to climb Cadillac Mountain, but the combination of soggy ground…and foggy vistas…
made us stop before we reached the top.        Nevertheless, it was a hike full of scenery and smiles.
Bar Harbor is surprisingly tacky and touristy.  It’s an almost-daily docking spot for big cruise ships.  However, the surrounding area is full of little harbors (some of which are replete with lobster traps!), villages and more than a few big, old-money estates.

We also enjoyed some downtime.  Our campsites were on waterfronts.  We enjoyed scenery, campfires, meals, playoff baseball and college football on TV and just hanging out…and Sting is still dreaming of driving the rig!

October is the end of the “season” in Maine.  In Belfast, boats were being taken out of the water and towed to winter storage.  We caught one great restaurant in town for breakfast, then found it closed when we tried to go back the next day for seconds. 

We were on the front end, not the peak, of fall foliage.  There’s still more green than color, but there’s enough color to let us know what time of year it is.  We also noticed a lot more color at the end of our time here than at the beginning (40-degree nights will change leaf colors quickly).

We had to say goodbye to Gwen on Thursday, but then connected with Ralph and Kim Klinke, dear friends from Snoqualmie Ridge, who were visiting Bar Harbor on a photography and hiking excursion.

One highlight of our time together was hiking up to Bubble Rock Overlook, from where we could see not only the precariously located Bubble Rock (proving that glaciers have a sense of humor)…

but Jordan Pond and the Atlantic beyond.

We all indulged in another lobster dinner after that adventure.  Ralph and Kim had never eaten lobster in the shell before, so we coached them up – “See those cracks in the shell made by the restaurant?  Break them apart there and eat the meat.”  What priceless expertise.

We also played golf at the eighth oldest course in the U.S. , Kebo Valley, near Bar Harbor.  It’s a classic track, proving that 350-yard par 4s can be treacherous.

Our coolest evening – literally and figuratively – was sunset at Schoodic Point.  At sunset, it was full of rocks, waves, cameras and friendship.

We had high expectations for our time in Maine, and they were exceeded.

Next stop:  Boston (which will be in a good mood after the Red Sox blowout of the Yankees in Game 3 of the ALDS).

My nostalgic post-before-last about our supposed final trip to Vermont wasn’t quite true.  After leaving Lake George, we had a cross-Vermont jaunt on our way to New Hampshire because, to paraphrase the locals, you can’t from theah to heah without going through theah.

We drove past Killington Mountain, where the Noels used to do their skiing while the Kaesers were at Stratton.  Killington was where I experienced one of my earliest you’re-getting-old moments – I taught Pete and Abby how to ski there, then one day they zoomed off and I couldn’t keep up with them any more.

Woodstock is right up there with Manchester (and Stowe, which is farther north) in terms of Vermont towns with scenery, history and a cool vibe.  Happily, it also has a Main Street wide enough to drive The Big T through without any angst.

We also passed a willpower test by eating lunch at the excellent Long Trail Pub & Brewery without the rig driver partaking in any refreshments (although a six-pack of Long Trail’s excellent Harvest Maple Brown found its way into the fridge for later use).

Leaving Woodstock, we saw our first covered bridge of the trip.  More would follow.  

Soon after leaving Woodstock, we crossed into New Hampshire, our 25th state of the trip.  En route to our campsite, we had a biiiiiig moment – a moose sighting!  S/he was in a grove of trees near the highway, calmly foraging for something more interesting to eat than leaves while a dozen camera-toting tourists snapped away frenetically.  We overheard one woman say she’d lived in the area for 26 years and this was only the second moose she’d ever seen.

We stayed in Conway, NH (North Conway, actually – there are five villages in the town), which is north of Lake Winnipesaukee and at the south edge of the White Mountains, home of big, bad Mount Washington.

One morning, we visited some of the covered bridges in the Conway area (one of which, weirdly, has a gift shopping in the middle of it that smells like the worst Yankee Candle shop you ever walked into).

We then stumbled onto a hidden jewel, Echo Lake State Park, featuring the spectacular Cathedral Ledge.

We took the dogs on a nice little hike to Waterville Valley and Sabbaday Falls, back near where we’d spotted the moose the previous day (who had moved on, thus sparing everyone the spectacle of Roxy trying to make friends with a moose).

The one rainy day we had in Conway, we ate lunch at a brewpub that has an all-time no-smoking sign.

Thursday, it cleared up and we dragged ourselves away from the Blase Davis – Kavanaugh hearing long enough to climb Mount Washington, the tallest peak east of the Mississippi.

Well, we didn’t literally climb it.  There’s a train that goes to the top.  I dare anyone to find a more interesting train ride – three miles, 3500 feet of elevation, with an average grade of 25% that includes the 37% grade called Jacob’s Ladder.  It was the first railway in the world to use a “cog” system – a rack-and-pinion located in the middle of the track.  The trains all have a throwback look and feel, but they’ve been retro-fitted with more modern technology (although our locomotive had a steam engine, meaning we had to stop halfway up to reload with water).

The railway has been operating since 1869.  It’s always been about tourism.  When built, it was the alternative to a dirt road for getting to the hotel at the top of Mount Washington (a popular destination for the well-heeled to escape the summer heat – President Ulysses Grant was an early patron).  The road is still there (now paved) but the hotel is not – there’s now a weather observatory and a visitors center at the summit.

And views.  Oh, the views!  On a clear day (which we were lucky enough to get – the peak is fog-bound 300 days per year, one of the reasons why the mountain proclaims itself as having “The Worst Weather in the World”), you can see five states in a 100-mile panorama.

The trip back down was more intense than the ascent.  The guy who was our happy-talk narrator on the way up was our all-business brakeman on the way down.  Everyone thought his priorities were fine.

We timed our trip perfectly, relative to the historic events in Washington (DC, not Mount) that day.  Our trip to the summit was during the lunch break of the Blasey Ford-Kavanaugh hearing, and we got to listen to most of it on the radio while driving to and from the mountain.  Mount Washington was more uplifting…in more ways than one.