Post by Grubb. Even in the rain the White Mountains have been an explosion of warm colors. When we arrived on Friday I expected the forests to be swarming with people, more commonly known as peepers, mesmerized by the autumn foliage. Where did they all go? Did we leave (no pun intended) them in Maine?…
Author: Grubb
Halloween hike
Post by Grubb. When does a hike become a fright? You start off by only reading the first sentence describing the trail in the guidebook. The one that says the 3-4 mile Dome Mountain Trail is “one of the most rewarding walks in the Randolph area.” Then you say to yourself, “That sounds great to…
State of nature / state of Maine
Post by Grubb. Thursday, on the way to New Hampshire, we took our final hike in Maine outside of Skowhegan on the Coburn Trail. Ten feet from where parked our Nissan Rogue, we were engulfed in a forest of maple, beech, oak, and pine. Walking the sun-dappled woods in wilderness Maine. That’s been my experience…
40 miles long, 18 miles wide
Post by Grubb. And this body of water, 120 feet down at its deepest, is not a pond. According to the locals it’s a veritable lake, Moosehead Lake, where we’re spending two nights in a Squaw Village condo bordering a golf course on a forested bluff above a beach. It’s midweek, I think. Wednesday? This…
Along the Raven route, an eyeball
Post by Grubb. It’s Tuesday afternoon and we’re headed to Moosehead Lake. It’s a three-and-half hour drive. Cruising up Highway 9, fall was revealing its spectrum. Red tree, orange tree, gold tree, green, full-flushed and towering, conifer branches thrusting out, connecting to the surrounding forest. I was almost ready to believe Richard Powers in that…
Please don’t shoot the orange people!
Post by Grubb. Tuesday morning we woke up to marvel at the colorful sunrise on the bay. Across the water, in Canada, the lights of St. Andrews were still twinkling through the trees. After breakfast (banana for Ella, pistachio muffin for me), we drove up the highway eight miles and then stopped for a hike…
About that smoke
Post by Grubb. John Wylie texted this morning to ask whether we have been affected by the Canadian fires. I mentioned that Saturday, when we were on Cadillac Mountain, I thought a mist was clouding the view from the eastern ridge. But on looking at shots taken from the reverse angle up the top of…
The haunting of Eastport
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…
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…