Mystic Seaport Museum – Day 10

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Seven years ago, when we first passed through this coastal town of Mystic, Connecticut, it was late in the day, which didn’t afford us an opportunity to spend any quality time here. We are rectifying that today.

A restaurant so small I’d say you’d be lucky to get a dozen people in this joint that’s appropriately named Kitchen Little. I had the Portuguese Fisherman breakfast consisting of chouriço (Portuguese chorizo) and linguica (Portuguese kielbasa) mixed with eggs, peppers, onions, and a jalapeno cheese on top of a Portuguese English muffin while Caroline’s breakfast omelet included fiddlehead ferns, a tasty veg discovery we’d never heard of before.

I’m happy nobody was with us on our walk through town and along the river when this drawbridge was raised for a passing boat, as we’d have embarrassed ourselves with our geek-squeals of delight, oohs, aahs, and general nerdiness that might be weird to normal people who live near drawbridges. This is the Mystic River.

The last time we were here at Mystic Seaport Museum, it was only 45 minutes before closing time; now we’re here before they open at 10:00 and are like kids going into Disneyland for the first time.

There’s a dilemma for me when entering any museum and that’s, where do I start? I want to be everywhere simultaneously and see the most important things first. That level of anxiety creates issues for me as I typically downplay the first things I see, knowing that around the corner is the real stuff. In the end, everything was worth seeing, and I often wish I’d spent more time exploring and examining the details of those impressions.

Then there’s the variable that asks, how long will it take to see everything? The answer is likely longer than we have to dedicate to this moment we’re out here. Part of my brain panics with the thought, but what if we never come back? Reality thought plays out with the good fortune that if we try to exercise some intention and desire to return, then we likely will.

The whaling ship Charles W. Morgan launched back on  July 21, 1841, and was retired in 1921 after 37 voyages over the course of its career. Lucky us as next year, the Morgan will be taken out of the water for renovations that will take nearly five years, but today, under beautiful skies, we get the opportunity to walk out on Chubb’s Wharf and walk on the deck and below of the oldest surviving commercial ship that is still afloat.

To our untrained eyes, the ship looks perfect, but then again, we cannot see what’s below the surface and how the structural integrity of the ship is holding up after being in the water for 176 years. In a world of replicas, simulacra, and simulations, it’s nearly unbelievable that this actual ship plied the waters of Earth, hunting whales and storing their oil below this deck.

Look into the rigging and try to imagine the people who crawled up the mast while at sea. They would be over 100 feet over the deck or more than 11 floors above the sea as they maneuvered among the 7,134 square feet of sail.

Below the deck are the galley, sleeping quarters, and storage space for supplies and whale oil. I can’t help but think that if the opportunity arose where a modern fleet of these old wooden masters of the sea was to offer adventurers to cross the Atlantic on such a craft, some of us would sign up for such a voyage.

While these try-pots are certainly a historic curiosity, there is also something very grim about authentic cast iron pots that were used to cook down whale blubber into oil. In some way, I feel like this is akin to looking into the ovens at Dachau that were used for cremating humans.

The Mystic Seaport Museum is a living treasure that reminds visitors that when the ships of the world came into port a full cadre of crafts and services had to be on hand to service the needs of the ships and their crews.

Plymouth Cordage Company Ropewalk was once the largest rope producer on earth, but after 140 years of business, the company shut down in 1964. The machinery and 1/3 of the ropewalk itself were moved from Massachusetts here to Mystic Seaport, where we can see the equipment and type of environment in which rope for rigging along with twine was made. For those with a keen eye, you can see that the process is nearly identical to making yarn. As for the shortened ropewalk, it used to be 110 feet long, which was needed by the men to walk out the fibers as they twisted them into lengths of rope up to 90 feet long.

This is the Fishtown Chapel that was moved to the museum in 1949. For a while back in 1900, it was used as a school but was then abandoned and sat decaying before being rescued and restored.

Trying to imagine the buzz around town when a whaling ship was seen on the horizon returning to its home base after being out at sea for two years. The spouses had to wait for the hopeful return of husbands and fathers who would come back to see their children having grown significantly older. With the masts towering 11 stories high, it would have been taller than everything in the area. At the height of the whaling industry, skyscrapers had not yet been built in Chicago or New York, so these ships would have been seen as incredible feats of engineering.

How fortunate America is that Mystic Seaport Museum also plays host to the Henry B. DuPont Preservation Shipyard, where the craft of keeping aging ships afloat and in working order lives on. We could stay here all day and maybe even a second full day, but with 245 miles between us and our next motel, we can’t linger too long, and with heavy hearts, we pull ourselves away.

Once again on the road, it was a brutal drive south past New York City – where we found ourselves in a traffic jam on the Cross Bronx Expressway that forced us to stop and crawl for an hour and a half.

We only had three miles to travel through this congested city, but it took 90 freaking minutes of astonishment and moments of claustrophobia.

Finally, we start to see the clutch of NYC release its grip on us. How do people do this every day?

Across the bridge in New Jersey, we fly in between beautiful wetlands on one side of the turnpike and stinking factories on the other. It was almost 9:45 p.m. when we arrived at our Days Inn in Wilmington, Delaware.

Whales, Walls, and Water – Day 9

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We’ve already been out and about with a walk along Clarks Cove as the sun was supposed to rise, but the heavy clouds and rain cut that short. Back in the coziness of our room, I crawled into bed for a nap until our host, Ron, was ready with breakfast. Talk about feeling like royalty living on the edge of luxury; this is it.

Imagine it’s the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, and Melville published Moby Dick 10 years prior but is still struggling to be recognized as a serious author. He and his wife, Elizabeth, are walking up to this house, and there are no waiting throngs; celebrity is proving elusive, but in the future, long after this writer has perished, he will find immortality. Maybe it’s only the notorious that find fame in their lifetimes when it relates to the kind of impacts that change our perceptions.

The New Bedford Whaling Museum opens at 9:00, and maybe because others are still at church here on Sunday, we are the first of just a few people to be visiting the exhibits. The bones Caroline is standing between do not belong to a dinosaur; they are the jawbones of the sperm whale. If you’ve not read the book, Moby Dick was an albino sperm whale.

This is a half-scale whaling ship named Lagoda that was built nearly 100 years ago, long after commercial whaling had come to an end. For five years, Melville worked the seas hunting sperm whales on a ship similar to this, where he would have had to participate in everything from harpooning the creature to taking it apart and rendering it down to oil to light parlors across America.

New Bedford Whaling Museum

From the whaling ship, the crew would board whaleboats armed with a variety of harpoons used for killing the leviathan, as seen here from a replica, though I’m not certain that the harpoons aren’t real.

Around this time, we met a docent named Lucy, who happened to be here on her day off. We share with her our fascination with all things related to the sea, how we’ve been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium countless times, our visits to Coastal Oregon, the love of tidepools that we read Moby Dick in our car while traveling, and how all of this influenced our trip to visit New Bedford. Picking up on our obvious enthusiasm, she decided to share something with us.

Lucy went over to a locked cabinet, telling us how the things inside were usually shared with school groups as adults typically don’t find it all that interesting. What she took out and handed over to us was a sample of spermaceti, some sperm oil, right whale oil, and the treasure of all treasures, ambergris. Ambergris has a scent that is magical and beyond my ability to explain just what it is. As for Lucy, she’s originally from Poland which allows us the opportunity to discuss things European and acknowledge our perception that not many Americans seem to have a deep curiosity for the natural world.

We were not going to leave New Bedford without a visit to Johnny Cake Hill to at least catch a glimpse of the Seamen’s Bethel and the Mariners’ Home. I have to admit that we couldn’t make time to visit these iconic and historic buildings as we are on our way to Mystic, Connecticut, to visit the Seaport Museum that we didn’t have the opportunity to check out when we were in the area seven years ago.

Somewhere on the road in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.

The gimmick of a giant milk jug with a Holstein perched atop it worked to drag us over to Salvadors Ice Cream stand on the side of the road in Dartmouth. This is probably the quickest way to pull Caroline and me into a business; just dress it up in some kind of absurdity, and we’re yours.

Our interests seem to have no bounds, well, that’s excluding jazz, country and western, most sports, racism, and the will to stupidity; so beyond that, we are pretty much interested in most everything, including stone walls framed with dandelions on one side and blue sky on the other.

Get out and see America NOW. Believe it or not, this country is disappearing as it loses its identity to consumers of blind conformity. We visited Gray’s General Store here in Adamsville, Rhode Island, which has been in operation since 1788, but we are so far off the beaten path that, in spite of its authenticity, this historic business will likely never draw enough tourists to make it viable as those people picked up what they needed at nearby New Bedford, Massachusetts, or in Providence, Rhode Island. Meanwhile, the locals increasingly buy their goods on Amazon. Combine this with the need to remove our increasingly valuable old signage and weathervanes lest they are stolen, and the very appearance that adds so much character to these outings will one day be gone.

Caroline Wise and John Wise in Adamsville, Rhode Island

Sure, our faces are blurry but this is part of our proof that we were for a second time in our lives here in Rhode Island. It’s just crazy to think that Los Angeles County is nearly four times larger than this state. Strange that our last trip to this state saw Caroline as being blurry, and now we both are; what gives?

Add coastal Rhode Island to our list of desirable places to live.

The Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island

Apparently, some very wealthy people thought the same thing about the Newport area of Rhode Island, such as The Breakers seen here. While we didn’t have the time to visit this mansion once owned by the Vanderbilt family, we made a note that it might be interesting to one day visit the complex of mansions maintained out here by the Newport Preservation Society.

Castle Hill Lighthouse in Newport, Rhode Island, was our last stop before getting on it to head over to Mystic, Connecticut, where we had a room booked for the night.

We arrive in Mystic with the last bit of light offering us a glowing horizon that punctuates another perfect day. Our course today took us on a beautiful winding series of roads that kept us close to the Atlantic among farmlands and the summer stomping grounds of America’s elites of 100 years ago. The golden age of the American Industrial Machine was at its strongest back then, with the super-rich building a lifestyle that took full advantage of the countryside that was theirs. Today, we were able to have a brief glimpse of what was part of that appeal.

Going South in Maine – Day 8

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

How do you turn a 240-mile, four-and-a-half-hour drive into an all-day affair? You travel with John and Caroline. But if you do, be prepared for our flavor of crazy, such as leaving the motel at 5:30 in the morning. Waking to a clear sky and some brisk weather, we were prepared to indulge the senses with more Maine than was originally on the schedule and to limit it to a smaller area for the sake of taking in the environment.

We stayed overnight in Ellsworth because of its proximity to Bar Harbor and the Acadia National Park to the north, but on stepping out of our room, we decided that our first visit was enough and that we should explore new territory, so we headed south toward Surry, Maine which became the location for our first photo of the day.

As we continue to meander across the countryside, trying to balance hugging the shore using roads that aren’t always in the best place to capture glimpses of the larger bodies of water attached to the Atlantic and being aware that we have a destination we have to reach today, we come to Blue Hill, Maine. These little villages on the various inlets, bays, and rivers make it immediately clear why the Bush family is so enchanted with coastal Maine.

C&G Grocery in Sedgwick, Maine, is about the furthest we’ll head out on this peninsula today, though Little Deer Isle and the larger Deer Isle sandwiched between East Penobscot Bay and Jericho Bay are calling us.

Instead, we’ll continue our drive of exploration and consider those islands in the bay as places that will hopefully one day draw us back to Maine for a third encounter with the state. Further north, we were aware of how the land was just moving out of winter, but here we are starting to see signs of spring.

Castine comes into view and whispers in our eyes that maybe we’ve found one of the communities we’d like to spend some of our retirement in. The idealism layer we are allowed to drape over our perception to make a town or village into the image we desire is likely delusional, but it’s far better than looking at these bucolic locations through the filter of the angry side of the population who are frustrated by the lack of jobs. What kind of jobs do they often want out this way? Unsustainable ones that would destroy the seaside and pastoral appeal to those of us who are traveling as they strip the land of trees and drag every last fish and ounce of coal or oil out of the surrounding area.

Trinitarian Congregational Parish of Castine, Maine, was established in 1829 and proudly boasts of its Protestant heritage coming from the Puritans who left England to help establish the United States. The community of Castine also lays claim to being one of the longest continuously inhabited areas in North America, occupying this area since the early 1600s.

Dice Head Lighthouse here in Castine has been standing since it too was built back in 1829 though for decades now it sits decommissioned.

This small town is the epitome of a beautiful, if not perfect, seaside community. The population is tiny and gets even smaller as the local Maine Maritime Academy sees many of its students depart for Eastern Europe in early May aboard the training ship the State of Maine.

Heading up the coast on the Penobscot River, we spot and have to stop for this abandoned trawler that turns 70 years old this summer. Used originally as a fishing boat, it was acquired by the US Navy in 1942 and commissioned as the USS YP-414. Following the war, it reverted to its original name, FV Squall, and stayed in operation until it was removed from the registry of boats in 1977 and became a breakwater for the marina where it remains docked and rusting away.

Penobscot Narrows Bridge and Observatory in Prospect, Maine

We ate lunch at Verona Island’s Seabreeze Restaurant, which isn’t really important at all, but as we continued our trek south, we had to cross the Penobscot Narrows Bridge, which enchanted us with the feeling that we somehow knew this bridge. Getting home we learned that the cable-stayed bridge had just opened six months before and had been featured in the media as being one of the 100 best innovations of 2006.

Our second visit to the Purple Baboon in Belfast, Maine our first was back in 2000.

Add Belfast to the list of places we could call our summer home.

On the Little River in Belfast, just adding to the charm.

On Highway 1, we were driving along when I looked out to the sea and thought that might be a nice photo. Forget the sea view as I found this license plate from Maine that spells out VEGGIES. With Caroline being a vegetarian, it seemed like a sign from the universe that we are meant to be here instead of it just being a lucky find where someone lost a license plate off their car; that would be too simplistic an explanation. We dragged this back to Phoenix to hang on our wall as a souvenir of our time out here, seeing we couldn’t find anything else representative back at the Purple Baboon.

Chestnut Street Baptist Church in Camden, Maine, represents yet another faction of the Puritans as a separatist religion that was on its way to America to practice their flavor of fundamentalism back in the early 1600s. Four hundred years later, we’ve brainwashed ourselves into believing in a righteous form of Christianity to an extent that we cannot perceive our own radicalized beliefs, which, from my perspective, look a lot like Islamic fundamentalism. I resent these practices with a belief in some outer-space-inhabiting deity who is portrayed as a petty-minded bigot full of rage that casts unsaved souls into an abyss while rewarding whack jobs who propagate agendas of hate and intolerance with eternal life and/or virgins. Give me a break! Although I’ve got to admit that many religious buildings that celebrate their god(s) are amazing. Maybe we should pray to architecture?

Camden Marina plays host to vessels that should be ordained as holy craft as they shuttle the fragile souls of humans over the dark and mysterious seas, which have a fierce power to consume lives while offering nothing in the form of redemption. Maybe the sea is the real God?

Somewhere on Highway 1 on the way to Portland, I stop at my personal lord and savior who has set up shop in the back of the mobile church of commerce. I’m a Foodatarian who prays three times a day, sometimes five, in the direction of the dining table. On that altar, I crucify the body of the animal and vegetable before consuming their flesh as a sacrament. Sadly I practice some of the worst aspects of Catholicism as after consuming the soul of the meal that failed to accept me as the son of God; I banish it to a life in hell by turning it to shit and sending it into the darkness of the eternal sewer. Maybe that lobster stew will see the light and find my truth before it, too, must suffer damnation.

Last great view of the Maine coast before getting on the turnpike and cruising right through New Hampshire. I’m done with the religious stuff, well, at least until we get to Salem, Massachusetts, and we can start examining the religious zealotry that led to the burning of witches. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with humanity?

We should all go on vacation and worship beauty, pray to blue skies, and baptize ourselves in the waters of the sea for the sake of communing with the fishies.

You may have the impression that when we travel, we avoid large cities – you would be right. On this day, though, we intentionally made our way into the heart of Boston and grabbed a parking spot at the Boston Commons. Turns out that Boston really is a nice city, well, the little we saw of it. Diversity is the most obvious feature; history comes on quickly, and friendliness is just around the corner. Our tour was a fast one, with only two hours on the streets.

We checked out the grave of Paul Revere and tried to identify the exact spot of the Boston Massacre, which we were standing on, but the signage wasn’t very good (and it doesn’t help that this historic site is now a traffic island). For Caroline, the highlight would have been the site of the Boston Tea Party, but we couldn’t find it for the life of us – it appears the area is under construction and difficult to approach for the time being. A friendly guy on the street and his girlfriend told us how great Boston is and only felt sympathy for us living in Phoenix. Both had tried living in Phoenix but found it too impersonal and ‘cold.’ China Town is small compared to San Francisco’s, Washington D.C.’s, and Los Angeles’s China Towns, but hey, at least they have one.

Too bad we didn’t have more time to visit the historic side of Boston, but at least we are now intrigued and will hopefully find ourselves quickly returning to Beantown.

Our destination today is New Bedford, where we are staying at the Melville House Bed & Breakfast – right in Herman Melville’s old room; hooray for whales! After we checked in, we ventured into the old town and found some dinner at Freestone’s City Grill in a former bank built in 1872 that is part of the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park. Besides a dish of local quahog, you should know that Caroline also enjoyed a Whale’s Tale Pale Ale!

Arriving at night was a stroke of luck as under the cover of darkness, the charm of 1850s New Bedford seemed to still be alive. Cobblestones and old-fashioned lights with the architecture looking much like it must have when Melville used it as part of the story that was as big as a whale.

This might have been Melville’s room but might not have been, as nobody knows for certain. It is known that Catherine Melville hosted her brother here, but it is also true that it was well after 1850 when Melville penned Moby Dick and his sister lived here. No matter these small details as after Caroline read this amazing book out loud in the car to us over the previous months, we are simply delighted in this opportunity to dwell in the shadow of Melville and what he captured 157 years ago.

West Quoddy Head Lighthouse – Day 7

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

We keep doing this thing of renting cabins out of some romantic idea that a cabin in the woods is the ideal location to get a real feeling of things. The amenities that are in these places don’t really lend anything to our experience since the place where we lay down our heads and grab a  shower has little impact on the quality of our day. Having the opportunity to barbecue is certainly a benefit, and if this lodging is far removed from the bustle of a city, then it is certainly more desirable than an expensive hotel. On the other hand, a cheap motel typically gives us all we need, including a much cheaper price.

This was our place in Stockholm, Maine, and even though it was twice the price of what we’d like to pay, we still wish we could hang out a couple more days.

We weren’t gone, but a few minutes before, the glimmer of the sun that shone on our cabin gave way to heavy cloud cover, followed by fog encroaching on our day, but that’s a bit later.

A vacation in Maine wouldn’t be complete without a quick stop at Hubcap Heaven in Littleton. Now we own this experience too.

This quadruple mailbox in Hodgdon caught our eye and had us wondering how often someone manages to stuff something into the top two boxes or if the owner welded those shut to stop any potential shenanigans.

Just down the street still in Hodgdon is a shoe tree. After smelling a few pairs, I can advise you to think twice about following suit.

We checked out this fixer-upper with the seller telling us it is common in Maine for empty homes to take a beating over the harsh cold season but that this wasn’t anything handymen weren’t familiar with.

On closer look, the kitchen showed promise, and the refrigerator was solid. We’ll have to think about this and maybe shop around to ensure this is the best deal, especially because we were hoping for something closer to the ocean.

This home almost has it all, including a beaver-maintained swimming pool.

OMG, I don’t even know if this is real. If this old gas station were for sale, this deal would be clinched as everything to get a clean start here on the East Coast could fall into place.

The interior of the station is impeccable and loaded with treasure; it should be a museum. We drove away from Waite, Maine, and these antiques, trying to stay close to the Canadian border until reaching Calais on Highway 1, where we stopped at the Sandwich Man for lunch. Why is this important? Because they are breadcrumbs for us to follow again someday, that’s why.

Eastport was the easternmost ‘city’ we visited, and a good thing we did as a bright yellow and red building caught our eye and demanded we stop. Eastport is home to Raye’s Mustard, the very last 100% stone-ground mustard maker in America. We ordered five varieties after sampling a dozen and had them shipped back to Arizona.

Our next stop was Lubec, Maine – the easternmost ‘town’ in the U.S. The distinction here is a fine one, but we learned both in Eastport and here in Lubec of the pride of being the easternmost town and easternmost city. We will visit the town proper after going to the lighthouse as we are having a break in the rain we’ve been driving through.

On the shore of the Lubec Channel fed by the Atlantic, Caroline doffed her shoes for a brief walk in the surprisingly warm gray waters before taking a short drive to the easternmost ‘point’ in the U.S. That’s the Lubec Channel Lighthouse and Canada behind here.

West Quoddy Head Lighthouse was heard before it was seen as the foghorn was blaring through the heavy fog. With this visit, we have now been to all four corners of America, from Mile Marker Zero in Key West, Florida, to the Cape Flattery trail and overlook in Washington, down to San Diego near the Mexican border. Oh yeah, we have also been to the geographical center of the contiguous United States near Lebanon, Kansas.

We were not going to bypass Lubec, as just snapping a photo at the Welcome To Lubec sign didn’t represent a real visit. Getting a decent photo in the worsening weather left a lot to be desired regarding the photogenic nature of the place.

It was already late in the day when we left the area on Boot Cove Road that hugged the Atlantic with nary another soul out there. With the fog, our drive became quite mysterious. Merging onto Highway 191 we headed in the direction of Machias for dinner at the Bluebird Ranch Family Restaurant before aiming for Mason Bay Road that brought us here to Jonesport.

We later learned that Jonesport is the home of Looks Lobster, the very first lobster reseller in the United States, but it was the whiff of smoke we caught on the way that hinted at a fish smoker in the area and alit our sense of smell with aromas that were teasing us with the desire to sample whatever that was. It’s late, though, and nothing is open out here.

Somewhere out there, the bridge and the sound of frogs take those willing to drive into the abyss out to Beals Island. The island is shrouded in dense fog obscuring our view and begs us to try to figure out where we are and what is happening deep in the mysterious mist. In the bay, a tiny floating dock appears to be an outhouse, but what would that be doing floating in the bay? For now, the circumstances regarding this toilet of mystery will remain outside our realm of knowledge.

The world disappeared with fog so thick we could hardly see 10 feet in front of the car. Good thing it seems that nobody is out there. Shortly before 9:00 p.m. and early on our clock, we finally arrived in Ellsworth at the Comfort Inn we booked over a month ago for the bargain price of only $57.

The Moose in Maine – Day 6

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Had we not woken at 4:30 and hit the road an hour later, how would we have been able to win this view of the brightening sky reflected in the calm waters here in Maine?

This is a powerful reminder of just how close to winter we still are. In the distance, you can see the snow between this mostly frozen lake and the forest.

The moose are everywhere. Another dozen are seen this morning. They look a bit mangey as they shed their winter coat, and some look like they’ve been near starvation. The guy in this photo stared at me for a good two or three minutes before deciding to put more space between us.

Sweet god, who does this route planning? Oh yeah, it’s me. In order to capture another 15 miles of the Rangeley Lakes Scenic Byway, we were heading south on Maine Highway 4 to Madrid and then up the 142 to Kingfield before heading southeast again, this time towards North Anson.

For our efforts to avoid major highways, we are rewarded with views such as these.

You’ll never see nor hear this from the freeway. Hopefully, we’ll get to come back through this area some late August or early September when the foliage is in full growth and the browns of winter have given way to the vibrant greens of summer, but then we’ll probably long for the warm colors of fall.

It should have taken us about 75 minutes to drive from Rangeley to Solon, Maine, but we were able to drag it out to take two-and-a-half hours. We are experts in slow. About shopping for bait, bolts, and bullets, well, we don’t know anything at all about this stuff, so we take a photo for the weird memory of it all.

Bathroom sign in Maine

In the Village of Abbot, Maine, we saw this very accurate graphic representing the two of us as we scrambled for a bathroom. I should start a blog of all the cool signs we’ve seen across America.

From Abbot on Highway 16, we picked up the Piscataquis River as we continued on our northeast drive. Like lighthouses, we have a soft spot for bridges of all types; add a fly fisherman on the banks of a river with the bridge in the background, and you’ll hear tires squealing as we pull over with an urgency that surprises us we’ve not been rear-ended yet. Then again, there have to be other people out here driving these remote roads to encounter us, so I guess we are mostly safe. As for our current location, we are at the Lowe’s Covered Bridge in Guildford.

At one time, there were about 120 covered bridges in Maine; today, this is one of the last nine still in existence, only five of which are open to traffic. The original bridge built in 1857 was lost during a flood in 1987 but was rebuilt in 1990. If you look closely at the photo, you can tell where the foundation of the old bridge was raised to avoid another washout. When you see how beautifully these bridges complement the surroundings, it is truly a shame that of the original 120, so few would remain standing.

Who could ever forget this image on the Sebec River in Milo, Maine?

Welcome to Millinocket, Maine. We are stopping in front of the 5 Lakes Lodge on South Twin Lake with the snow-capped peak of Mt. Katahdin in the background. Once in town near lunchtime, we took a pause at the Scootic In Restaurant. These notes here are as much for us as it is for a reader: should we find ourselves back up this way these places will be on our list of to-dos.

Stacyville, Maine, looks like somewhere we could live, except this is entering mid-May and not the dark, cold days of January. So how does one become wealthy enough to live out here and not worry about paying the bills?

We drive north on the 11 until reaching Ashland, where we turn on the 227, followed by the 228 and the 161 until we start to approach and pass through Stockholm, Maine, where we are renting a cabin for the night. We are heading to the Canadian border so we can touch the furthest northeast point in the United States that we can reach.

A pit stop introduces us to Moxie Nerve Food. While it’s now known simply as Moxie Soda, it is one of the oldest soda brands in America and is considered the taste of Maine. As for the sights of Maine, this upper part of the state appears significantly different than the southern part. We’re not sure if this area has simply been deforested as that’s the main economic resource of this state and nobody cares as it’s not a big tourism draw such as the coastal region. Similar to other areas, the roads out this way are wrecked; we can only figure it’s due to the heavy winter snow and the logging trucks that haul tons of logs down Maine’s highways.

Here we are at the border control stop at the Canadian and American spot on the map that separates our countries.

After talking with a border control agent, we found that we could walk out on a pedestrian bridge, and as long as we did not pass the International Boundary Line, we wouldn’t have to go through immigration on our return to America. Across the way in Edmunston, Canada, we can hear church bells ringing on this gorgeous 86-degree day.

To get back to Stockholm, we are taking Highway 1, which hugs the Canadian border in Eastern Maine. When we get to Van Bruen, we cannot take the 1A due to it being closed by a chemical spill, so we continue on the 1 towards Acadia and Caribou. While in Caribou we stop at a store to pick up orange juice, hot cocoa, frozen veggies, mushrooms, and a steak so we can make dinner at our cabin.

Back in Stockholm, we check into cabin #3 at the Fieldstone Cabins on Madawaska Lake. We have a barbecue, and there are washing facilities so not only do we get a home-cooked meal tonight, but we have the opportunity to catch up on laundry. Believe it or not, but we are deciding to sleep in as a couple of days of waking at 4:30 is starting to drag on us.

Vermont and Beyond – Day 5

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Who asks for a 4:30 wake-up call while on vacation? The kind of people who want to be outside their room by 5:15, that’s who. Why would anyone want to be up and gone by the break of dawn? Because there is no other way to witness this kind of sky. How many times will anyone have the opportunity to see such sights with their own eyes?

What are the subconscious influences that determine why particular routes are chosen over others? As I look at the map of the area, there’s a part of me that thinks that maybe we should have hugged the St. Lawrence River, but our primary place of interest wasn’t that waterway but getting over to Maine. But why Maine? To some degree of awareness, I vaguely know that the idea of the state holds some kind of romantic intrigue. I don’t know why this is in the back of my mind, and can only guess there are images that found their way into my imagination that took hold, kind of like the notions I have about old abandoned buildings.

I know that we have to avoid freeways at all costs until they become the only way to get to our destination, and the rural roads we travel – if we are so lucky to find ones without fences – have an appeal due to the lack of barriers, which draws me into this particular land being more open than those lands beyond even only two-wires of barbed wire standing between me and what’s on the other side. This doesn’t feel rational, and in the distance, I see exactly what I would see even with the two thin wires, but there’s an emotional component that defies logic. Somehow, this applies to my sense of maps when I’m plotting a path.

Rambling along old backroads, we are leaving the Trout River-Westville Rd and turning south on State Route 30 at the Canadian and United States border in New York. Across the border is Godmanchester, and in front of us is Constable. On the radio, we mostly find French broadcasters and a great diversity of programming – not like what we have heard further south. Not many people are living up here. There are a few farms but not much else besides the countryside and plenty of signs.

There are a lot of internal signs that impact my decisions to operate from intuition, while when physically maneuvering our world, the signs imposed by laws constrain my actions. The internal signs are pointers to dreams that help fulfill aspirations, and so it is that we are out here now, trying to decipher and make real whatever the hopes were that formed the structure of this adventure.

There’s so much water out here, and so much we can’t see. If we were here on a summer evening would we hear frogs, would we see fireflies, or whatever other nocturnal life living out here? Those who dwell along these roads and waterways, do they spend time learning about their environment, or is it invisible background noise no longer making an impact? We are enchanted by scenes like this and look for what fish, birds, butterflies, and plants are along the riverbank and what’s in the channel. We are only afforded the most superficial of experiences, though, as this isn’t about immersion but impressions.

While driving just south of the Canadian border, we’ve been tuning into various radio stations along the way with the majority of them broadcasting in French. When the soundtrack to an environment is as new as the place itself, the thrill of novelty is amplified and takes us into perspectives beyond our expectations. Since our departure this morning from Massena, New York, we’ve been traveling on the Military Trail Scenic Byway.

Our hearts pull us toward North Hero here on our return to Vermont, but the desire for new experiences demands we head over the bridges toward Swanton, Vermont.

There are a few things one must see in Vermont, and farms play a large role in that.

Covered bridges made of wood are another thing on the must-see list visitors should seek out. This particular one is the Power House Covered Bridge in Johnson, Vermont.

Add forests and cascades to that list; check.

Metal moose and giant metal daisies are the kind of lawn ornaments the people of Ohio could learn about, with their plastic deer decorating their front yards. Come to think about it; I wonder why the people of Arizona haven’t discovered fake enormous scorpions or javelinas for their yards? Then there are those pink flamingos down in Florida – that’s it; I want to see giant metal pink javelinas in my future.

With only a bit more than five hours in Vermont, I’ll be the first to admit that it was nowhere near enough time to understand the breadth of character this state has. Our second glimpse of the place makes it even more attractive, and the hope to return for a more extensive will burn within.

Hello, New Hampshire and North Stratford! So, we know nothing more about this first town in New Hampshire than we did before we passed through. Sadly, this state will mostly be a blur. Our route will take us down the Daniel Webster Highway along the Connecticut River until we reach Groveton, where we pick up the Berlin-Groveton Highway, also known as the Woodland Heritage Trail.

Stark Covered Bridge over the Upper Ammonoosuc River in Stark, New Hampshire is as good a reason to stop to take in a sight. Have I ever shared that Caroline and I are in love with America’s scenic byways?

While we were in town, this old church from 1853 also caught our attention. It was built shortly before the bridge above.

And within two hours, we were about to say goodbye to the Granite State but not before we heard our first loon out here on the White Mountain Scenic Drive. I should make a note to Caroline and me that we need to come back to this corner of America sometime in June or September to better explore Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

Home for the next three nights will be right here in the great state of Maine.

No loons here, but plenty of frogs to listen to here at Cupsuptic Lake on Wilson Mills Road.

How did I miss that the Wilhelm Reich Museum called Orgonon in Rangely, Maine, was along our path? Here we are, showing up well after they closed for the day, drats. Who was Wilhelm Reich you ask? Author of The Function of the Orgasm, The Murder of Christ, Listen, Little Man!, and The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Reich was also a controversial figure for his theory of Orgone, or the energy of the orgasm, and how its regulation was important for mental health. I first learned about him from William S. Burroughs back when I was a teenager in high school.

In Rangely, where we’ll be spending the night, we had an early dinner and then used the late-day sunlight to head up “Moose Alley.” Along the way, we spot about a dozen moose that look like they barely survived winter and some elk and even a beaver. Back in town, the sound of frogs and loons will soon take us off to sleep, but first, we request another 4:30 wake-up call.