Day 15 - Wed, 7/28

Posts are in reverse order - last first. That's how BlogSpot works.

Three and a half hours from Roanoke to Mt Holly and we're done. Going out this afternoon to drop a check off with Bonnie, the young woman who looked after my cat, the Pathfinder seemed huge and empty with just me in it.

Day 14 - Tues, 7/27

Today it was the remainder of Pennsylvania, then a bit of Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia - to a Comfort Inn near the outskirts of Roanoke. More tree covered mountains along rural roads that curve through valleys, dive down narrow hollows. I am struck by how much of the country is still forested. I imagine creatures, some with four legs, some with two, hiding just out of sight in the woods watching us speed past in the silver car - whispering, "Here they come; there they go." I can almost see their eyes.

Bob has another vision - of marauding old people in tour buses roaming the North East. Sometimes competing groups fight over choice viewing places, over spots in cafeteria serving lines. (This on Cape Breton - they were all over the place.) We speculate that press gangs of old people are after us, that they will get us and put us on one of their buses - a perambulatory purgatory.



(Me on one of the walkways through Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water - which he designed for the Kaufmann family near Somerset in Western PA. )


(Bob and Sara visited this place - in the BMW I think. It was one of their many car trips. While we followed our knowledgeable and pleasant guide and I asked a few questions Bob stayed a little to one side and remembered being here with Sara and her wonder at the place. He said that after they left she was very quiet and later when they got home he would catch her paging though her Falling Water book. Sara imparted lore gathered on their trips to the children she taught back in SC.)


(Wright gradually reduced the height of the walls around these cantilevered concrete patios. Done to trick the eye the design would have made it easy for someone to take an artistic header into the rocks below. )



A covered bridge near the little town of Shanksville, PA. We were looking for the Flight 93 National Memorial which according to Bob's Michelin map was supposed to be nearby. Two ladies walking and working near the two-lane back road verified that there is a memorial. We saw a couple of signs and a rusted angel near a field which looked like a place where a plane might have gone down. That's all. But we did see this bridge and we did on a whim decided to go to Falling Water. As Bob said, "We are 30 miles from it and you'll never get here again in your life."



(Supporting structure in the bridge and a bit of graffiti announcing that "weed is good".)


(On the way to find the place where Flight 93 went down we encountered ridges populated by huge windmills. We saw them periodically throughout rural PA.)

Day 13 - Mon, 7/26

Diagonally across NY, down PA - miles and miles of tree covered slopes with towns and farms in the valleys. One wonders, who owns the wooded hills? Do people go there much - to hunt, hike, whatever? Tonight it is Altoona PA.


(A place just outside Altoona where climbing/descending trains make U-turns around the side of a mountain. Seems that Altoona is a a destination for train buffs. Bob has been here before with Sarah.)



(We had lunch at Beemans, a meat and potatoes place frequented by old people near Sayre at the top of PA. The food was good and cheap but the commode seat did not fit the toilet and it felt as if I was about to fall off.)


(Beeman's - where we begin our dive through PA. )


(At the upper end of the state route 220 is a two-lane blacktop winding up and down through narrow valleys and little towns. This is the view from a service station in one of those places. No matter what else might be lacking there are churches with big impressive steeples. That has been true throughout our travels.)

(After supper we rode around Altoona. This is part of a huge train museum where Bob once came with Sarah. Bob has an uncanny ability to navigate strange places - to glance at a map and figure out where he is and to remember the essentials of the map. After this picture was shot we went through the underside of Altoona - past rickety row houses with people outside watching with interest as we rumbled slowly by - two old men in a silver convertible.)

Aside - This morning at 4:00 AM I woke from a dream that seemed more real than this Hampton Inn, the trip, Altoona PA. Leaving the dream was like leaving an unremembered life and for a long uncomfortable time I could not remember where I was, what I was doing. The dream - which might have featured a woman - seemed to be the better place. Looking at a Cracker Barrel receipt brought me back.

Day 12 - Sun, 7/25

(Honest-to-God Vermont covered bridge. The state is lovely - a picture postcard version of itself. Although there are plenty of abandoned buildings along the back roads we travelled, the area generally seems more prosperous than the parts of Maine we saw. The economic base here seems to be big dairy farms and tourism - probably logging too.)

(Place where we got maple syrup. I also got peanut brittle which I finished tonight in the Bennington VT Hampton Inn. The lady inside was nice. So were the couple driving the Mercedes Benz with California plates. )

(Sunday morning at 5:00 AM I walked down the street from Gorham Motor Inn to McDonald's to get coffee and biscuit. The tired little woman said I was her first customer. The guy moping the floor seemed crazy. On the way back I walked through the local cemetery and shot this picture. The BMW rumbled slowly past and I walked back down to McDonald's to join Bob for juice and another coffee. Bob observed what appeared to be a domestic dispute between the crazy guy and another employee. )

(Vaults like this were once used to store bodies when it was too cold to dig graves.)

Random notes before getting ready for NY...

From an email to Genie - Trying to figure out what people do for a living in various places has been a consistent theme in conversations between Bob and me. Some places it's obvious. On the coast they get stuff from the water; inland they farm or get money from tourists whio come for this or that attraction. (In Providence money comes from institutions - right?) But some places there appears to be nothing. That section of Maine was amazing - as bad as anything I have ever seen in the South. Then I started thinking about places I know well - what would somebody say riding through Mount Holly? There don't seem to be enough mills or factories - not any more. The same thing with most other towns I know. Is this the information economy? Has the base of the economic pyramid been offshored? Interesting. In some ways this trip has been a lesson in economics as observed from an open car.

Somewhere - we saw an eagle being harrased by crows.

Somewhere - we saw huge windmills scattered across mountain ridges.

Leaving the parking lot of the Gorham Motor Inn we had to pause for a French motorcylist playing catch with his son in the parking lot. The man paused, moved to one side to let us pass and his tough guy countenance brightened into a pleasant smile as went by.

Last night one of the waitresses at the Bennignton Chili's (near our Hampton Inn) reminded both Bob and me of Brenda - dark creamy tan, high cheekbones, serious manner, cat eyes, long blond hair in a braid falling off one shoulder. I felt ancient.

Day 11 - Sat, 7/24

From the Hilton Inn in Bangor ME to the Gorham Motor Inn in Gorham NH. From the tarpaper shacks of Maine's underside to Mt. Washington in NH where we drove to the fog shrouded top. In 1934 (?) the highest surface wind in the world - 231 MPH - was recorded at the weather station on top of the mountain.


(Near the top of Mt. Washington. A tense seven miles. The road – unpaved in some places – was narrow and steep. We got close to sheer crumbling edges. And lots of cars were going up and coming down. But thousands of people have been making the trip for a long time. I wonder what happens in the winter with the staff at the weather station at the top of the mountain. Do they ride the cog train up and down every day?)


(The cog train up Mt. Washington was the first in the country. This was an older version.)

(We noticed several streams with rock cairns spaced periodically down the middle. Once boom chains were attached to guide logs downstream to saw mill operations.)

(Typical of places Bob and I have been calling "compounds" - houses, barns and outbuildings all attached - so the people don't have to go outside in the winter - the fact of life up here.)

(Some little town in northern Maine. There is a lot of empty country up here, but some development too. Most is old and run down. The question still comes to mind - what do people do for a living? What is the base of the economic pyramid?)

(Going down one of several back roads, working our way across north central Maine, we encountered a number of shacks. Hovels covered with raw insulation board, tarpaper, plastic – yards littered with trash. It’s as bad as anything I’ve seen in the south except that here there are the winters to contend with. Based on unscientific observations from Bob’s open car, economic conditions in the rural north generally seem poor. There are a lot of for sale signs and abandoned houses. I wonder if the population is declining in some of these places.)

Day 10 - Fri, 7/23

Travelling day - slog day - from Sydney NS to Bangor ME. Nothing much to report - other than to note there is a hell of a lot of empty country in New Brunswick and northern Maine. And it was nice to drive back in the US. I almost felt patriotic.

(I have now seen the start and the end of I95 - Maine to Miami.)

Rocks - rocks up here push closer and closer to the surface - pushing through to reveal the Earth's base - hard, lumpy - ancient strata bent by tectonic forces. Then there are the people. (In the South our rocks are hidden.)

In Cape Breton where the headlands drop into the Atlantic and whales are sometimes seen from this overlook a friendly Frenchman and his wife pointed out a tiny figure hiking along the ridge of a naked mountain.

Day 9 - Thur 7/22

We toured Cape Breton and highlands in light rain, then returned to Delta Hotel for the night. About 2,400 miles. Tomorrow we head south.


(Almost unreal - like Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, Oregon - I don't know. People see whales out there. Almost impossibe to absorb.)


(Same thing.)


(Tim Hortons - all over this part of Canada. My new favoriate fast food place.)



(The Lick-A-Chick - south of Sydney. The companion Lick-A-Treat is across the street.)


(New Age remedies between Celts on one side of Breton and Acadians on the other side.)

(The Yatch Club beside our hotel.)

(A store front in downtown Sydney. Also saw two places nearby that deal in dentures. Sydney seems fairly prosperous. North Sydney, where the ferries go, is a gritty port town.)

(Dinner place near hotel. I had tai food first night, huge hamburger and chowder the second night. It was all good. The waitresses were dressed as Scottish serving wenches - sturdy healthy girls in short Tartan skirts and knee socks.)

(On the Cabot Trail. Young man playing bagpipes in drizzle in front of Gaelic College. The lady running the gift shop made him stay out in the weather. Later there were six or so boys playing at the same time. Made me want to hit the arrogant French man standing nearby. In this part of Cape Breton the the road signs are in English and Gaelic. On the other side they are in French. I wonder how well these two groups - three if you count other English - get along.)

Day 8 - Wed 7/21

2000+ miles.

(Motel notes from last night. My commode didn't work - I fixed it at 2:00 this morning - and I had no soap. Bob had menacing bug in his room and no TV. He slept two hours. )

We went too far today - 12 hours from Shelburne to Sydney NS. The trip is assuming a mythic quality. One exotic scene after another. Coming toward Sydney the bay looks like a fiord.

We both might be getting a little dark. Watching reenactors at Halifax Citadel (a fort in middle of city overlooking harbor) we speculated that the thing might be a little more real if they staged a mock execution - perhaps grabbing some tourists to serve as victims.

******
Morning of the ninth day.

Random notes before going out to walk around Sydney before breakfast.

People and stuff...

Wiry old guy in Hawaiian shirt and cowboy hat at the service station where I stopped to get coffee who wanted to talk about local politics.

The woman who served us lunch a little restaurant, explaining "pork scraps" to Bob -he declined. Asking us if we wanted separate "slips". The old man and woman - the old man dapper in colorful clothes, face red from the weather and from drink too I guess, the old woman using a walker, patient, the old man helping her, patient too. The nicely rounded middle aged woman at an adjoining table who might have given me the eye.

At the Irish theme restaurant a couple blocks from the hotel, the windy fat man who tried to engage waitress and wife in conversation. He had better luck with waitress - his wife just sat there staring into space.

We and Z4 are becoming oddities. Getting out of Halifix pausing too long at a complicated traffic pattern we were yelled at by the young man in the following car "Just go, go - sir!". Pulling in last night to the Delta in Sydney a fat man standing beside the entrance stared at us with hostile interest. The trucker I followed for 200 k - traveling at just the right speed. When a caravan of campers pulled out for N. Sydney ferry Bob wondered if the trucker had gotten mad - maybe about to nudge a few plodding RVs off the bridge. I am becoming less tolerant of bicylists on narrow roads, big campers on narrow roads. (Sorry Larry, Chuck.)

Porsche, making a statement, blasted by us and our trucker friend. Back down the road I blasted by somebody else. Road karma. Anyway I thought the Porsche was funny.

Got an email from Bonnie - the girl looking after my cat. Bonnie had seen evidence of Brenda's ghost - who reaches out over 2000 miles (what are miles to ghost?).

Unannotated pictures...

Day 7 - Tues 7/20

Rode ferry 3 hours from St. Johns NB to Digby, NS. Big boat, holding maybe 300 cars. Two places to eat, gift shop, many places for passengers to sit. Were in fog all the way. A woman sat beside me and said, "Eh, are you from Digsby?" Old woman across from us appeared dead. A boy practically begged to be allowed to sit opposite us. (A pale white boy reading school papers he got off ferry with darker boys including one spirited limping oriental.) A woman negoiating narrow path between cars and trucks parked in hold started screaming and had to be coaxed into family camper

Leaving Digsby drove up Canada roads 1, 101, 3, and 103. Saw some wilderness, some habitation. The question as always is how do these people make a living?

Went though a long section where the only signs were in French. Probably Acadian settlements. Saw signs proclaiming Evangeline Trail.

Several people yelled out that they liked our car, including one drunk in Yarmouth standing on the curb drinking beer.

Saw lots of houses with attached barns - thus minimizing the time outside in the winter. Saw sheep. Expected more.

Spending night in classic old-style motel in Shelburne, a historic little dory building town. Place has a different slant on Revolutionary War. They celebrate landing of Loyalists. Sitting on deck of restaurant, we saw a group of reenactors row past in harbor. They were flying Union Jack. Several sloops anchored just beyond restaurant. One was the Genie. She slowly swung on anchor. A group of smaller boats sailed by.

We ate big seafood meal topped off with apple crisp and cream. All the time we were eyed by rogue seagull sitting just above on roof of building. He swooped past Bob. (30 years ago riding trail bikes down a dirt road, my bike threw up a black snake which was still in the air when Bob went by. Another time we were observed by a line of dogs lead by a big German Shepard bitch. When Bob roared her way, she casually walked off, followed single file by the others.)

Day 6 - Mon 7/19

Up the coast of Maine, into Canada at Calais then across New Brunswick to St. Johns. Tomorrow we take noon ferry to Digby Nova Scotia. After cheeseburger, beer and fries with gravy at local pub, I'm a bit groggy. This will be brief.

(Morning of day 7 - waiting to check out and go to ferry to NS. Random stuff - St. Johns, especially the area around Holiday Inn is harbor town. That's why it looks bleak. The ocean and winter take their toll. Aspects of coast of Maine reminded me of NC - the guys are like some mountain men - rough fellows who live doing physical work. Which makes the accents more jarring. And southern boys have longer hair. The women - some of them - appear hard and dour.)


(Pub where I had cheeseburger and fries with gravy (in dipping cup on side -a hearty au jus). Couple blocks from Holiday Inn. Patrons gamble on NASCAR and ice hockey. Paying with Canadian money a small challenge. This is the real deal.)

(Reversing Falls in St. John where tide comes in, revserses and goes back out. Not too spectacular. Have we become jaded? However the French speaking rednecks were interesting.)


(In line waiting to go through border into Canada at Calais, Maine. We caught the interest of the Canadians and they searched our bags and did background checks on both of us. Maybe it was something about two old men in sports car. But everybody was friendly.)

(We took a lot of side roads bordering Maine coast. Beautiful. But many houses were for sale and based on cars seen in driveways it looked that many people had not gone to work. Fellow directing traffic at road paving side said economy is always bad up here. Aside - saw houses with front door opening several feet from ground. Bob has seen same thing in upstate Michigan, Said it is a snow thing.)

(Worcester wreath company in Harrington Maine. Most elaborate business enterprise we saw in Maine.)

Day 5 - Sun, 7/18

We gathered for breakfast in Warwick Hampton Inn - Bob neat in his road attire, Genie pretty in her loose flowing church dress, me, well. Leaving RI we passed Genie's little blue car on I95 then headed north toward Boston. That was anticlimactic trip - not much traffic, not much to see.

But...

Saw an odd little fellow in a conductor outfit at the trolley museum in Kennebunkport Maine. He was sad when we left. (I had hoped to take a picture of Bob in front of Bush compound.)

Saw nesting osprey in a restaurant parking lot (with feed from webcam displayed in the foyer).

Saw (and traversed) spectacular suspension bridge over body of water (somewhere in Maine) where colonials lost a bunch of ships in revolution.

Looking down a thousand feet or so from rocky dome of Cadillac mountain to Bar Harbor, looking across Acadia woodland, looking across ocean through distant mist - imagining Nova Scotia (where we will be tomorrow), witnessed the most spectacular scenery I have ever witnessed.

Experienced the road - which in Z4 is visceral and direct.




(View of Bar Harbor from Cadillac - which I expect is named after explorer and not car - saw no Escalade Highlands. Picture copied off Internet. I left my camera back at Hampton Inn where we checked in first before going to Bar Harbor.)


(The bridge. Revolutionary war engagement took place in water below - I think. Wish I remember the details - they appeared on nearby plaque.)



(At the seashore trolley museum near Kennebunkport. There were other fellows standing around eager to explain things. In the same spirit as the Quonset hut display near Providence where a grizzled old seabee standing at the door of a hut invited us in, promising artifacts and information. I bought a new cap and a cup of coffee at the trolley place.)

Sat Night in Providence - Waterfire Festival

Genie and I went to the Providence Waterfire festival... a series of 100 bonfires on rivers that pass through center of city. Gondoliers transported people back and forth. There were street artists (some men dressed as gargoyles, a woman as an oracle) and jazz and rock and roll music groups. People danced in bank courtyard. We sat on low wall for several minutes and watched people parading by. Listened to snatches of conversation, revealing bits of lives. Took a still picture of bulding that was supposed to be the model for the Daily Planet tower where Clark Kent (Superman) worked. But it turned out too dark.

Some crude little videos.


(The waterfires.)


(The gargoyle.)


(People dancing.)

Days 3, 4 - Fri 7/16, Sat 7/17

Yesterday we drove across NY and Conn, then at 4:00 arrived at Hampton Inn in Warwick, south of of Providence. Genie picked us up, showed us parts of Providence - which is very old and very different from what I know. We had Salmon and pasta at her house, then took Bob back to Hampton Inn.

Today we toured some of surrounding little towns and places along shore. Visited place where Quonset huts were developed. Met some older fellows who proudly proclaimed to be Seabees. Saw rocky coast. Saw three aspects of Newport (old, touristy, and magnificent playground of robber barons). Saw an old guy riding a recumbent bicycle with a windscreen in case he got too fast. Told Genie and Bob that Kurt Vonnegut set parts of novel, Sirens of Titan in Newport. Also told them about Kilgore Trout, another Vonnegut character who came from Cohoes NY where I worked the winter of 1965 or so. Might have overdone it.

Tomorrow it's Maine.

Some pictures...

(Cottage in Newport)

(Rocky seacoast - a first for me.)

(Genie - out hostess in RI. We're at the homeplace of Gilbert Stuart - fellow who painted famous portrait of George Washington. Lots of history here. Saw two large, impressive Unitarian churches that go back to founding of country.)

(Near little harbor place where we had lunch, sitting outside, watching family try to get toddler in pink life vest so they could go out on their Boston Whaler.)

(Bob and I at Seabee place - where they have info on Quonset huts - named after Quonset Indians from RI.)

(Train somewhere in Conn - or NY. Many quaint little towns on this scenic route, lots of mountain roads.)

(Below is video of couple getting married to bagpipe music in Newport.)