Post by Grubb. Touring the new dimension, I’m getting used to not being thrown by the counterintuitive. As Ella covered in her blog post, waterfalls not only don’t fall, they ripple in reverse. Today (I’m guessing Monday) on our way up the coast we took a side jaunt into Eastport and discovered that although there…
Author: Grubb
Arcadian Acadia
Post by Grubb. Taking the last hike of the day (Sunday…I think…whatever…) we went out the back door of the inn where we’re staying and headed up into the woods. It was late afternoon and no one was on the trail. Just us and the trees and the mossy stones. The root-gnarled path took some…
High-stepping the mountain stone
Post by Grubb. Sunday morning we got up early and headed over to the ocean edge of Acadia National Park to climb the peak of Gorham Mountain. All 525 feet! Welcome to a world where mountains are the size of what I’ve been accustomed to experiencing as hills in New Mexico. So at the start…
On Jordan Pond
Post by Grubb. Scale changes when you enter a new dimension. When the Acadia Visitor Center shuttle bus dropped us off at foot of the Jordan Pond trail I realized my proportional world was in for a readjustment. First there was the mob clotting the throughway by the hot dog stand that led to the…
Way down below…an eagle?
Post by Grubb. The Penobscot River was not to be missed since we were going to cross it on the way to Northeast Harbor. The bridge that crosses this expansive river is stayed by a spray of cables streaming down from two giant columns, one of which has the tallest bridge observatory in the world….
In the fog, a lighthouse
Post by Grubb. Cautiously measuring my stride over the slippery granite blocks of Maine’s Rockland breakwater only confirmed that in my new dimension I was looking through a glass darkly. When, late this morning we arrived at Rockland’s jutting shoreline, the resort hotel purported to be looming over the waters of the bay was lost…
Footbridge to the Gilded Age
Post by Grubb. I like to think that when we moseyed across the footbridge over the inlet of Boothbay Harbor I was actually stepping back in parallel time. On the hotel side of the bay the large shingled resorts and lobster restaurants have, according to the plaques, been converted from Gilded Age mansions. Apparently, this…
Dahlias from another dimension
Post by Grubb. Okay, even if I am in a different dimension, you’re sharing it with me, so I guess it’s alright to keep on blogging. I have to admit that it’s awfully exciting to think I’m reporting back from a parallel universe no matter how slight the difference. Yesterday (Thursday in both dimensions), we…
Stepping into another dimension
Post by Grubb. That’s right, it happened while we were walking along a trail in the Boothbay Botanical Gardens (which, given its size and woodsy paths, should be called a Botanical Forest). The rock to my right had an opening that, according to a kindly lady in a golf cart, was designed by an artist…
A marginal existence
Post by Grubb. Wednesday morning we left the magnificent house where Joey and Elaine live in Sudbury. (The place has a basement theater off the ping-pong room which is off the pool table room. It has a 100-inch screen and electric recliner seats. It’s lucky I don’t live in such a house or else I…
The city that gobbled the revolution
Post by Grubb. When I visited Boston in the early 1980s I went to the top of the Hancock Building for the panoramic view. I remember the green swath of Beacon Hill, historic church steeples poking out of brick neighborhoods, and the embracing bend of the Charles River. There was also a nifty topo map…
Gilded Age monuments to big living
Post by Grubb. Sunday was spent in the rain, a continuous drizzle that drove us indoors. Connecticut has some famous houses and we visited a couple. First, the Mark Twain house which is next to the Harriet Beecher Stowe house. Both dwellings are large and magnificent, but between these two 19th century heavy hitters, Twain…
Apologies to Moby
Post by Grubb. Saturday morning it was raining when we hit New Bedford. At one time, this Massachusetts shipping town was the center of the American whaling industry. Now it just sticks with fish. Downtown by the docks the cobblestone streets were slippery, the weathered brick buildings damp and dripping, giving the area a 19th…
Farewell to vanishing in Cape Cod
Post by Grubb. If you imagine the birds eye view of Cape Cod as an arm bent at the elbow with South Beach at the bottom and Provincetown inside the curved fingers of the fist at the top, it looks like the long thin islet could easily disappear under the swell of a tsunami. But…
Provincetown parade
Post by Grubb. Friday, after taking a walk along the National Seashore, Marc and Judi took us to Provincetown for an afternoon ramble. A bayside Greenwich Village, since the 1920s P-town has been famous for being a summertime bohemian hangout. I expected rundown cabanas and a restored Provincetown Playhouse. The cabanas have morphed into upscale…