Bezabor: On to Bangor... (posted 10/7/05 at Orono Public Library, Orono, Maine)
Thursday, 10/6/05-
Another foggy day in Maine today. Stonington and Blue Hill are known for fog but it’s actually pretty widespread across the state today, I believe. The fog is too thick to kayak or to see much of the area so we’ll save it for another time. So-called ‘Merchant’s Row’, a string of small islands off Stonington, is supposed to be one of the top destinations for sea-kayaking in the country. We were there at the launch ramp but couldn’t see a thing!
Temperatures are surprisingly mild—overnight the temperature stayed in the high fifties and daytime temps have been in the upper 60’s to mid-70’s even with the fog. We decided not to go to Castine today but rather go inland to Bangor. At the University of Maine art museum in downtown Bangor we found an excellent Ansel Adams exhibit. His photos are of course stunning in themselves but we also watched a Ric Burns documentary on his life and learned a lot from it. I had no idea he had been a hyperactive child who could not attend school or that he had embarked upon a career as a concert pianist before becoming a photographer. The documentary explained Adams’ insight into art photography—that it was not about capturing an image that exists but about modifying the actual image (with a Wratten red filter to make the sky more dramatic or with burning and dodging the print, for example) in order to make the ‘real’ image, i.e., to capture the feeling that no other photograph could capture.
Later in the day we went to the University of Maine at the Orono campus and spent a few hours with an exhibit called ‘Truthtellers’ which consisted of portraits of well-known (and many not-so-well-known) people known for their outspoken views, often expressed at great cost to their personal lives. The power of the exhibit was not just in showing a portrait but in providing concise yet comprehensive descriptions of them and their work. We also enjoyed walking through campus and visiting their good bookstore and--- here’s a secret--- you can get a Starbucks caffe-mocha in the bookstore building.
We then headed for our home for the night, the Wal-Mart in nearby Brewer. But on the way we stopped at a Movie Gallery and rented a movie for the evening, ‘Ocean’s Twelve’. Interesting, but too much ego, I thought. They need to go see the Truthtellers exhibit.
Wednesday, 10/5/05-
We woke at about 0630 to a very foggy day. We had changed our minds about our destination overnight after reading our guide books. Rather than go to Bangor, we thought we’d visit Blue Hill and Stonington. Blue Hill is known for it artistic community and Stonington is a sea-kayaking destination.
In Blue Hill we first stopped at the Blue Hill Bookstore and it was a treasure. We didn’t buy anything but spent the better part of two hours browsing. Then we had an early lunch at ‘Pain de Famille’, a great little bakery and took a walk through town and visited a gallery and sculpture garden (the Leighton).
We drove on south, touring the very pleasant back roads of Cape Rosier and then angled across to the Wooden Boat School, where we browsed through their very interesting store. As we were about to leave, the clerk told us it would be all right to visit the boatbuilding shop (it only has programs in summer). That was a wonderful break—the shop had a half-dozen or so museum-quality wooden sailboats sitting about and a wooden sea kayak under construction.. and nobody around. We enjoyed just looking around the empty shop—checking out the woodworking equipment (it takes a heck of a lot of clamps to build a wooden boat!) and the workspaces where the students plan, loft, build, and finish wooden boats.
Afterwards we drove on to Old Quarry Campground for the night. The campground is near an old quarry and big blocks of granite (and lots of small ones) are everywhere. The campground specializes as a sea-kayaking center but we are off season, there’s nobody around and the fog is so thick today that you can’t see across the little cove. After a delicious supper of hot soup and French bread, we spent the evening updating the blog and reading.
Tuesday, 10/4/05 –
After updating the blog at the Southwest Harbor Library yesterday morning, we again visited Cadillac Mountain, this time on a foggy day. We had fairly thick fog at our campground and at Southwest Harbor but it cleared a bit as we drove north. Going up Cadillac Mountain, the road was clear but as we neared the top, fog rolled in heavily. But it soon cleared out again and we had great views of the ocean and islands below, with fogbanks partially covering the islands. We hiked over to the hawk watch site on the North Ridge Trail but the ranger told us they hadn’t seen any hawks yet today because the wind was coming from the south-south-west and hawks would not be flying until they have a wind more much more from the north. In the meantime, they are ‘hunkered down’ in the forest, resting and hunting to gather strength for the migration.
We then went into Bar Harbor and took a long walk through town. The highlight of our walk was the Whale Museum Gift Shop which at first looked like it might be a lot more gift shop than museum but turned out to have a lot of interesting information. We were happy to see their minke whale skeleton given our earlier sightings of minke whales. The skeleton was impressive, about 22 feet long. We estimated the length of the minkes we saw at about 15 feet but our distance from them may have misled us in our estimate.
We decided we had ‘done’ Mount Desert Island and headed north toward Ellsworth. The nearest free campground was at the Bangor Wal-Mart (hopefully) but we needed showers and a dump station so that wasn’t a good option. We found Lamoine State Park east of Mount Desert Island and welcomed it—a nice, clean, nearly-empty state park with a $13 per night rate and great hot showers (the national park campsites had been $20 per night and did not have showers). It was a great campground--- I walked a portion of the Loop Trail while Labashi showered then later we both walked part of the Loop Trail and walked down to the launch ramp after dark. As we came back to the van, we saw a man with a light who appeared to be near our van. But then we saw he was actually further away, in the campsite next to ours. This was a little spooky given that we had not seen anyone else. We walked over to see what was going on and found him on his hands and knees picking up wild apples and putting them into a milk crate. He’s a local fellow who feeds the parks apples to his goats--- “they love the yellow ones”, he told us. He also told us that he owns a construction barge and specializes in maintenance and placement of docks. He maintains about 180 docks all over the Mount Desert Island area. While talking we had started a campfire and we sat around it until bedtime. The night was quite warm--- 55 degrees. We learned from the weather-band radio broadcast that both the high and low for the day were 11 degrees above average.
Thursday, 10/6/05-
Another foggy day in Maine today. Stonington and Blue Hill are known for fog but it’s actually pretty widespread across the state today, I believe. The fog is too thick to kayak or to see much of the area so we’ll save it for another time. So-called ‘Merchant’s Row’, a string of small islands off Stonington, is supposed to be one of the top destinations for sea-kayaking in the country. We were there at the launch ramp but couldn’t see a thing!
Temperatures are surprisingly mild—overnight the temperature stayed in the high fifties and daytime temps have been in the upper 60’s to mid-70’s even with the fog. We decided not to go to Castine today but rather go inland to Bangor. At the University of Maine art museum in downtown Bangor we found an excellent Ansel Adams exhibit. His photos are of course stunning in themselves but we also watched a Ric Burns documentary on his life and learned a lot from it. I had no idea he had been a hyperactive child who could not attend school or that he had embarked upon a career as a concert pianist before becoming a photographer. The documentary explained Adams’ insight into art photography—that it was not about capturing an image that exists but about modifying the actual image (with a Wratten red filter to make the sky more dramatic or with burning and dodging the print, for example) in order to make the ‘real’ image, i.e., to capture the feeling that no other photograph could capture.
Later in the day we went to the University of Maine at the Orono campus and spent a few hours with an exhibit called ‘Truthtellers’ which consisted of portraits of well-known (and many not-so-well-known) people known for their outspoken views, often expressed at great cost to their personal lives. The power of the exhibit was not just in showing a portrait but in providing concise yet comprehensive descriptions of them and their work. We also enjoyed walking through campus and visiting their good bookstore and--- here’s a secret--- you can get a Starbucks caffe-mocha in the bookstore building.
We then headed for our home for the night, the Wal-Mart in nearby Brewer. But on the way we stopped at a Movie Gallery and rented a movie for the evening, ‘Ocean’s Twelve’. Interesting, but too much ego, I thought. They need to go see the Truthtellers exhibit.
Wednesday, 10/5/05-
We woke at about 0630 to a very foggy day. We had changed our minds about our destination overnight after reading our guide books. Rather than go to Bangor, we thought we’d visit Blue Hill and Stonington. Blue Hill is known for it artistic community and Stonington is a sea-kayaking destination.
In Blue Hill we first stopped at the Blue Hill Bookstore and it was a treasure. We didn’t buy anything but spent the better part of two hours browsing. Then we had an early lunch at ‘Pain de Famille’, a great little bakery and took a walk through town and visited a gallery and sculpture garden (the Leighton).
We drove on south, touring the very pleasant back roads of Cape Rosier and then angled across to the Wooden Boat School, where we browsed through their very interesting store. As we were about to leave, the clerk told us it would be all right to visit the boatbuilding shop (it only has programs in summer). That was a wonderful break—the shop had a half-dozen or so museum-quality wooden sailboats sitting about and a wooden sea kayak under construction.. and nobody around. We enjoyed just looking around the empty shop—checking out the woodworking equipment (it takes a heck of a lot of clamps to build a wooden boat!) and the workspaces where the students plan, loft, build, and finish wooden boats.
Afterwards we drove on to Old Quarry Campground for the night. The campground is near an old quarry and big blocks of granite (and lots of small ones) are everywhere. The campground specializes as a sea-kayaking center but we are off season, there’s nobody around and the fog is so thick today that you can’t see across the little cove. After a delicious supper of hot soup and French bread, we spent the evening updating the blog and reading.
Tuesday, 10/4/05 –
After updating the blog at the Southwest Harbor Library yesterday morning, we again visited Cadillac Mountain, this time on a foggy day. We had fairly thick fog at our campground and at Southwest Harbor but it cleared a bit as we drove north. Going up Cadillac Mountain, the road was clear but as we neared the top, fog rolled in heavily. But it soon cleared out again and we had great views of the ocean and islands below, with fogbanks partially covering the islands. We hiked over to the hawk watch site on the North Ridge Trail but the ranger told us they hadn’t seen any hawks yet today because the wind was coming from the south-south-west and hawks would not be flying until they have a wind more much more from the north. In the meantime, they are ‘hunkered down’ in the forest, resting and hunting to gather strength for the migration.
We then went into Bar Harbor and took a long walk through town. The highlight of our walk was the Whale Museum Gift Shop which at first looked like it might be a lot more gift shop than museum but turned out to have a lot of interesting information. We were happy to see their minke whale skeleton given our earlier sightings of minke whales. The skeleton was impressive, about 22 feet long. We estimated the length of the minkes we saw at about 15 feet but our distance from them may have misled us in our estimate.
We decided we had ‘done’ Mount Desert Island and headed north toward Ellsworth. The nearest free campground was at the Bangor Wal-Mart (hopefully) but we needed showers and a dump station so that wasn’t a good option. We found Lamoine State Park east of Mount Desert Island and welcomed it—a nice, clean, nearly-empty state park with a $13 per night rate and great hot showers (the national park campsites had been $20 per night and did not have showers). It was a great campground--- I walked a portion of the Loop Trail while Labashi showered then later we both walked part of the Loop Trail and walked down to the launch ramp after dark. As we came back to the van, we saw a man with a light who appeared to be near our van. But then we saw he was actually further away, in the campsite next to ours. This was a little spooky given that we had not seen anyone else. We walked over to see what was going on and found him on his hands and knees picking up wild apples and putting them into a milk crate. He’s a local fellow who feeds the parks apples to his goats--- “they love the yellow ones”, he told us. He also told us that he owns a construction barge and specializes in maintenance and placement of docks. He maintains about 180 docks all over the Mount Desert Island area. While talking we had started a campfire and we sat around it until bedtime. The night was quite warm--- 55 degrees. We learned from the weather-band radio broadcast that both the high and low for the day were 11 degrees above average.
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 11:42
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home