You Can Get Everything You Want

On Monday morning we woke to partly-overcast skies. We had breakfast at our hotel (so-so) and drove off for our first stop, the Franconia Flume Gorge in New Hampshire's Franconia Notch State Park. Because it was a state (instead of a National) park, we had to pay an admission fee, but it was worth it. The trail through the gorge is two miles; a piece of cake for energetic youngsters like Kathy and I.

After a quarter mile (steeply down hill), we came to the Flume Covered Bridge. Built in 1886, and restored several times since, it is one of the oldest in the state. This bridge was built across the scenic Pemigewasset River, which means “swift or rapid current” in the Abenaki Indian language. We paused at the bridge to let a large group of older Mennonite couples go past us. (And also, so I could catch my breath.)

Past the bridge, the river falls over an exposed, large outcropping of Conway granite, called Table Rock. The rock is 500 feet long and 75 feet wide. Apparently inner-tubes are not allowed, but that was all I could think of.

After Table Rock, the gorge narrows and the sides began to rise steeply. To allow visitors to traverse the Flume, the Park Service has constructed an elaborate series of boardwalks, which are removed each winter, so they won't be destroyed by ice falling from the sides of the flume.

The Flume Gorge starts out deceptively easy, but rapidly gets steeper and narrower.

Along the sides of the Flume, trees, ferns, and plants grow out of the sheer sides of the granite and basalt walls.

The sides of the gorge are stunning. I think my iPhone pictures look pretty good, but I can imagine what a professional photographer with a 4x5 camera could do.

Besides being narrow, the last section before the top is quite steep. The Flume was discovered in 1808 by 93-year-old  “Aunt” Jess Guernsey when she accidently came upon it while fishing. At that time, a huge egg-shaped boulder hung suspended between the walls. The rock was 10 feet high and 12 feet long.

While we were there, another couple volunteered to take our picture, which I don't especially care for. When I take selfies, I can momentarily forget, that, like an iceberg, most of my volume is below the neck line.

At the top of the Flume is a close view of Avalanche Falls. The 45-foot waterfall creates a roaring sound as the Flume Brook enters the gorge. The falls were formed during the great storm of 1883, which washed away the hanging boulder.

I liked this video of the falls. It was "slo-motion" on my iPhone but looks normal when I posted it to YouTube.

The Falls marks the half-way point of the hike. Once past the Falls, the trail loops to the north, through Liberty Gorge (cut by the Pemigewasset, not by the Flume Brook). Along the trail, there were informational placards explaining what kinds of wildlife we should expect to see. This was the Bear Cave and just over the bridge was the Wolf's Lair. (You had to climb on your hands and knees to go through that. We took the longer way around.)

Just past the Bear Cave is the Sentinel Pine Pool and Bridge. The Pool is 40 feet deep and 150 feet in diameter, and is surrounded by cliffs 130 feet high. On the cliff above the Pool, Sentinel Pine stood for centuries,  another 175 feet high and 16 feet around. It was uprooted in the hurricane of 1938 and now forms the base for the covered bridge. Upstream from the Bridge you can see this view of the Pemigewasset.

Even though the park placards promised moose, bear, deer, raccoon, and so on, the only wildlife we saw were some chipmunks, who didn't seem especially wary of the many visitors.

Since the trail was a loop, we were elated to find hat we didn't have to climb back up the original decent to the river, but came back out to the visitor's center from above. One of the distinctive aspects of the last part of our walk were the many large glacial boulders, with trees and vegetation growing out of them. Very Stephen Kingish.

Our stop for Monday Night was the Inn on Putney Road in Brattleboro, Vermont. From Franconia Notch we cut across to Interstate 91 from Woodstock, New Hampshire. (There are a lot of motorcyclists in Woodstock, NH. I tried to Google to see if it was something like Sturgis, but didn't come up with anything to explain why. I would have understood it on a weekend, but this was Monday and it seemed like 75% of the vehicles parked in the main part of town were motorcycles.) 

Once we hit I-91 we stopped at the Vermont Spot Country Store in Quechee Gorge, Vermont, to say high to Paul Billings' brother-in-law Chris Goodwin who owns the store. Paul is a missionary with our church, Calvary Chapel.

We stopped for a late lunch in Lebanon, New Hampshire. (I-91 follows the Vermont side of the Connecticut River, along the border between Vermont and New Hampshire. When you pull off for food or gas, you'll often find that you've crossed into New Hampshire. We got to the Putney Inn a little after five and, after unpacking, we were really too tired to go out again. 

I've never stayed at a traditional New England Inn. I think I was expecting Bob Newhart, with Larry, Darryl, and Darryl. The building was not unlike the set on Newhart, with comfortably historic public areas. But the large cast of eccentrics was entirely missing.

Our breakfast on Tuesday morning was very creative, with French-pressed fresh-ground coffee, a unique watermelon and berry fruit salad with feta cheese, strawberry pancakes, sausages and potatoes. It was a treat and much different than the serve-yourself cereal and pastry buffet we are often used to. If you are in the area, I'd definitely recommend a stay here.

Our final stop, before heading back to Catonsville and then off to California was at the Cornell Inn in Lennox, Massachusetts, only about an hour from Brattleboro on the Interstate. However, my Moon New England Road Trip guidebook said that we shouldn't miss a trip along the Mohawk Trail from Shelbourne Falls to North Adams (both in Massachusetts). 

The road was beautiful and, again, we found them almost deserted. (My current theory is that the GPS algorithms are having a real impact on traffic, routing people away from secondary roads. I really had to work to get Google to take me the way I wanted, by putting in secondary stops.) This is the statue about half-way to North Adams in the Mohawk Park.

Lennox is the home of Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Edith Wharton's estate, The Mount, and numerous foodie destinations. That wasn't what we were interested in. We came to see the Norman Rockwell Museum, because it had been recommended by our friend Jasmine Alnutt.  We began with a short, fifteen-minute film of Rockwell's life, followed by a half-hour tour of his studio. (The picture above, of course, was from when he was still alive.)

On the lower level of the museum, they have displayed all of Rockwell's Saturday Evening Post covers. from 1914 until 1963. On the upper floors, you can see many of the original paintings that were used to create the covers. This is his three-level self-portrait.

One of his most celebrated covers, and one which Kathy especially loved, was the Golden Rule issue with the paraphrase of Jesus' word from Matthew 7:12, "Do unto others and you would have them do unto you."

In addition to Rockwell's work, the museum also was hosting a topical exhibit, but that really wasn't what we wanted, so we drove the few miles to downtown Stockbridge (memorialized in many of Rockwell's paintings), to have lunch. 

Unfortunately, all of the recommended restaurants from our guidebook, served lunch from 12-2:30 and dinner from 4:30-8:30. It was 3:30 pm, and we were famished. Fortunately, even though the Main Street Cafe was just closing, we slipped in as their last customers.

After our early dinner, there was one more stop we had to make. Five miles south of Stockbridge in Greater Barrington is the Guthrie Center of Alice's Restaurant fame. The center was already closed, but I had to get a picture in front of Alice's Restaurant. That was on my bucket list.

As we drove back to Lennox, we'd come full circle on our trip. More than two weeks ago we started hiking the Appalachian Trail at Bull's Bridge in Connecticut on the Housatonic River. Now we were driving up the same river in Massachusetts, at dusk, singing along to a song we both remembered from fifty years ago. It's been a wonderful trip. We got everything we wanted.

Ciao Maine, Hello Pollyanna

 

We left our motel in Bar Harbor before breakfast so we could take in the 8:30 am (second) service at Calvary Chapel Bangor. We got to sit with Jeanette Graves and after the service we had the joy of visiting with her husband, pastor Ken. Joining Jeanette and Ken at their home church has been bucket-list item for Kathy.

There was a great turnout for the services with lots of families and small children.

After church we drove through Bangor and stopped for some photos at Stephen King's old house, which now houses his foundation for aspiring writers. (No, you can't go inside, unfortunately.) When we first got there we were the only people parked on the street. In the time it took to take a few pictures, four more cars pulled up with people wanting their picture in front of the creepy fence. And really, can you blame them?

Our drive to New Hampshire took about four hours. Half way there we stopped at Annette's Country Skillet Diner in Naples, Maine (near Long Lake) for lunch. (My foot kept falling asleep). Lunch was fine, but I felt a little like I was in a time warp. We've been paying $20 each for lunch; here it was $10.

We spent the last half of our drive following the Kancamagus Highway from Conway to Lincoln. We got out to stretched our legs at the Albany Covered bridge, a favorite spot for fly fishing.

This is a Paddleford truss bridge built in 1858. You can see the trusses as you drive through it. 

A little further down the road we parked and walked a ways up Rocky Gorge. Our pictures, though, don't do the river justice.

We got to our hotel in Franconia New Hampshire around 5 pm. Franconia is the town where Elisabeth Elliot lived in the late 1960s. After we checked into our hotel, we were still hungry, so we drove eight miles up the Interstate to the town of Littleton and had some Thai food at the Chang Thai Cafe. (Again, the prices were very reasonable.) This is the town where Eleanor H. Porter wrote Pollyanna, whose statue stands in front of the town library.

Tomorrow, on our way to Vermont, we're going to visit the Franconia Flume Gorge.  

Riding Acadia's Carriage Trails

On Saturday morning, Kathy and I went into town and rented two e-bikes for half the day so we could ride on the Acadia National Park's Carriage roads. The roads and bridges, created by John D. Rockefeller in the 1930s, are automobile free, but electric bikes are allowed.

The roads are fine gravel, so they were a little harder to ride on than the Cape Code Rail Trail which is all paved. From where we picked up the bikes in town it was about a mile and a half to the park entrance at Duck Creek Bridge.

Because we had only half of a day, we decided to first do the Eagle Lake loop to the south of the Park entrance (instead of riding all the way to Jordan Pond, which we would have done if we had all day).

The roads were not crowded, but there was quite a bit of climbing. It wasn't flat at all. Even with the electric bikes, it was a workout for me. Kathy thought that it was fine.

Because we rode a shorter loop, we arrived back at the Park entrance with an hour and a half left on our rental, so we decided to head north under one of the iconic Rockefeller bridges and ride around the Witch Pond loop.

This was also a pretty ride and the pond was lovely. All around Eagle Lake there were signs that said no swimming, because it was a public water supply. There were no such signs around Witch Pond, but I can't imagine anyone swimming in it.

We got the bikes back just in time and I was pretty tired, but not as completely wasted as when we rode the whole day. We picked up sandwiches at Subway and went back to our room for lunch and some recuperation. Around three, we headed back to the Park in our car to drive the Park Loop Road. 

The two-lane, one-way, 27-mile loop covers most of Desert Island. You can stop and park in the right lane. At the end of the island is a feature called the Thunder Hole. We got out and Kathy took this video. 

Early in the morning we're heading for New Hampshire, stopping off in Bangor, Maine for church.

Chow Maine

We woke in Portland on Thursday morning to a steady rain, not heavy, but not a mere drizzle either. We were both glad we'd visited downtown Portland last night. Today, we'd planned to lazily head up the mid-Maine coast, sticking our noses into inlets and gaping at towering lighthouses. That didn't sound so appealing in the rain. (I know, I know. Wimpy Californians.)

Instead, we let Google Maps route us to the Interstate, and spent the hours listening to Stephen King's Salem's Lot spin dark tales of the Maine woods just outside of Portland. The rain, and the dark woods we drove through made the story more believable. This is the lighthouse at Hendricks Head Beach in Southport.

On this trip, we'd been arriving at our destinations at 5:30 or 6:30pm. At noon we pulled up to our hotel (the Ocean Gate Resort just outside of Boothbay in Southport) and Kathy convinced me to see if we could check in early (even though our reservation said 4pm). The resort had just opened on Memorial Day, and so it wasn't yet high season, and they let us go to our room. After we unpacked, the rain stopped and fog rolled in. We were hungry, so we decided to explore and then go to town for lunch. It was low tide and the rocks stood out in all of the bays. In the morning, they would be gone beneath the water.

When we got to Boothbay Harbor, the sun was peeking out, and we went searching for lunch, parking in front of an old 1894 house overlooking the harbor. 

We walked halfway across the harbor on a footbridge, turned back and settled on pizza for lunch. One of the disadvantages of eating late is that I'm so hungry that I always order more than I can eat. We ordered a 16-inch pie and ended up leaving two pieces in our hotel room when we left

We wandered around town for awhile. Boothbay Harbor is fairly small and wasn't nearly as busy as Portland was yesterday.

After our late lunch, we drove back to our hotel and wandered around the grounds, admiring the new growth of spring. This is Maine after all, and spring comes very late here. We went to bed at 7pm and read.

What a difference the sunshine makes. This is the same view from our balcony on Friday morning. It looks so cheerful.

We packed up before 9am and had a great breakfast of (real, not powdered) scrambled eggs, thick apple -wood-smoked bacon, maple sausages, blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup and hand-squeezed orange juice.

Friday's trip was going to be a little longer than Thursday's (and prettier without the rain). Google Maps mercifully routed us up Route 1, down small country roads, and through charming little hamlets. One of the larger ones had a Dairy Queen and so we stopped and I bought a root beer float, which I love. Along the way we crossed the Penobscot Narrows Bridge with the Fort Knox Historic Observatory. We stopped and took a picture but didn't take the elevator to the top. I tried to convince Kathy that this was where the US Strategic Bullion Reserve was stored, but she made me ask Google, which informed me that the gold was stored in a different Fort Knox, in Kentucky.

We got to Bar Harbor early again, (about 1:30) but this time we couldn't get into our room. So, we decided to head down to the tip of Desert Island to Thurston's Lobster Pound for lunch. Our guidebook said that this was a very popular spot with lines stretching down the block. I figured that if we went mid-afternoon, we might beat the crowds, and we did. 

At a lobster pound, you pick your lobster and pay by the weight. Small lobsters (one pound) were $15.95, medium (one-and-a-half pound) were $16.95 per pound, and large (two pounds or over) were $17.95 a pound. 

Here are before and after photos of the lobster that we had for lunch. It seems kind of barbaric, doesn't it?

Along with the lobster we had clams, crab cakes, coleslaw, corn, and blueberry cake for desert. This was the first "real" lobster dinner I've ever had. It was very good, but I think that maybe, once in a lifetime is probably enough.

After our lunch-dinner, we drove around the Bass Harbor at the southern tip of Mount Desert Island, and hiked down to the Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse.

From the wooden stairs you can see across to Swan's Island. On the way back, we drove a portion of the Acadia National Park Loop Road. In the morning, we're going to rent electric bikes and try out the Carriage Roads. The Carriage Roads and stone bridges in Acadia National Park were created by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., between 1913 and 1940. There 57 miles of roads free of motor vehicles.