WAITING FOR ANTHROCYANINS AND CAROTENOIDS…

the beginning of
the leaf peeper season

Don’t let the title scare you… those are just the pigments that decorate the autumn foliage… and since New England is the fall foliage capital of the world… what better place to hang and watch the colors change than the White Mountains in New Hampshire?

We check into the Country Bumpkins Campground along the Pemigewasset River. This is a small, family run park with cabins, camping and a few full hook-up RV sites.  Folks come here year after year and it’s sometimes tough to get a space.  Luckily, they are in the process of adding a few more full hook-up sites and one is ready the day we check in.  The only caveats: no WIFI in this area (but we can get service by the office) and they are working on spot next to us (which is no problem as we are usually gone during the day.) The entire park is decorated for fall with cute scarecrows, corn stalks and pumpkins and some of the leaves on the trees are starting to turn.

If there's a historical marker…
It must be true!

This is a great base camp to explore the region. We are just down the road from Franconia Notch State Park with its miles of hiking trails, nearby national forests for more hiking and leaf peeping.   Plus an added bonus… this is the stretch of Highway 3 where on September 19, 1961, Barney and Betty Hill met up with some extraterrestrials – the first widely publicized case of UFO abductions.  A State Historic Marker commemorates where the event occurred along Highway 3.

Fadden's
Sugar House Museum

We head into the nearby town of North Woodstock to visit Fadden’s General Store and Maple Sugar House.  This classic New Hampshire country store has a small sugar house museum and also sells the Fadden family’s award winning maple syrup (six Carlisle Trophies for the best maple syrup in New Hampshire and a Governors Cup for the best in North America.) We pick up a couple of pints of syrup and a jar of maple cream.  Maple cream is a decadent concoction where syrup is cooked and then whipped into a smooth spread and it’s outrageously delicious… think: thick, creamy, concentrated maple syrup!

open fermentation tanks

Down the street from Fadden’s is the Woodstock Inn Stationand Brewery.  We see a sign offering tours so we pay our $5 tour fee and sign up.  The fee covers a commemorative pint glass and a six flight tasting and, of course, the tour.  We are the only ones to show up today so we get a private tour.  We start in the Brew Pub where we learn the history of the brewery and then head to the other end of the Inn to the brewery.  They do things a little differently here, using open fermentation vessels.  During the tour we actually get to climb a ladder and look into the vessels.

After the tour we head back to the Pub for some serious tasting and end up staying for lunch.  The Brews are good.  Their Autumn Brew with an apple and cinnamon flavor is especially nice with a shot of Fireball Whiskey.  The Lobster Egg Rolls are divine! Sweet chunks of fresh tender lobster rolled with a creamy filling… my mouth waters just thinking about them! We also get an order of their Spicy Mac and Cheese with sliced London broil and an order of their fish and chips.  The food is all pretty outstanding but the Lobster Egg Rolls are exceptional!  Since we are sitting at the bar, service is excellent!  Oh yeah the Lobster Egg Rolls are marvelous! 

Flume Gorge

The Flume Gorge is one of the most frequently visited scenic attractions in the White Mountains.  A flume is formed when natural forces, usually water, erode a softer rock that has filled a crack in harder rock.  This flume is in the Conway granite and is considered one of the finest examples of a flume gorge.  There is a $15 per person entrance fee, which seems exorbitant at first and well worth it after we actually enter the gorge.

Flume Covered Bridge

Before entering the gorge we pass by the Flume Covered Bridge, one of the oldest covered bridges in the state. There is a walkway bolted to the wall of the gorge and a series of bridges that take us back and forth over the rushing water.  We pass several waterfalls starting with Table Rock, an unnamed falls half way up and end at the Avalanche Falls.  

Bridge over Cascade Falls

We continue our two-mile loop and pass the Liberty Falls and cross a covered footbridge over the Pemigewasset River as it cascades into The Pool. The surrounding forest are filled with glacial erratics (huge boulders pushed by glaciers over 25,000 years ago.) Many of these erratics have huge trees growing on top of them with roots reaching around the boulders and into the ground. The estimated time to walk the two-mile loop is an hour and fifteen minutes… but we stretched that out to about three hours of gorge gawking. 

New Hampshire is famous for spectacular scenery, covered bridges, stellar fall foliage and TAX FREE SHOPPING!  So… when we wake up to pouring rain and a forecast for more of the same all day… it’s time to head to the nearest outlet center and do a little retail therapy. It is a very successful foraging day!

We want to extend our stay with the Country Bumpkins until the end of September, but the park is 100% booked over the next weekend when the New Hampshire Highland Games come to town… looks like it’s moving day…

k

THE ADVENTURES OF DAVE AND DIMPLES VOL 3.14

THE RETURN OF THE APPALACIAN TRAILER…

It totally sucks when you have truck troubles and nobody can pinpoint exactly what’s wrong.  Dave spouts another DEF warning light… We swing by the dealer and they make an appointment to come in after the weekend and advise us to drive and see if it clears…

Since we’ve pretty much explored everything along the coast we might as well head inland to our previously planned destination before Dave got sick…  We start out early morning headed towards Baxter State Park, the home of Mt. Katahdin the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.  Just past Bangor we get onto Hwy 95… speed limit 75mph… after some miles the error messages clear… Dave starts to run better… then… a regen… and… no new error messages… WOO HOO…  is this all Dave really needed, a hard and fast blow out of his emissions control system with clean fuel???  Hope springs eternal!

Lake Millinocket

We stop at Katahdin Air to see if we might still be able to fly over Katahdin in the next week… Sure… but it’s still dependent on weather…  Encouraged, we walk across the road to the Big Moose Inn Cabins and Campground on the shore of  Lake Millinocket (We made a 3 night reservation over a month ago, before Dave got sick… and we moved it forward a bunch of times and finally cancelled because we were pretty sure that we would not be able to get there… they have a 30-day cancellation policy and at this point we are out $93 for the three days that we previously booked and cancelled.) Katie at the lodge remembers us. “You finally made it!” she says when we introduce ourselves. She then reactivates and moves our reservation to the next week…  Guess it’s back to plan A!

After the weekend we take Dave back to the dealer.  They run the diagnostics and there are no error messages… So the next morning we pack up and head out to the Big Moose Inn and Baxter State Park. 

The Big Moose Inn has a total of 4 water and electric RV sites.  Since they are all empty we have our pick.  We choose one at the back that seems to meet all of our basic requirements.  The site looks incredibly lumpy but once we pull in and park, it is totally level.  Early the next morning we are awakened with loud bangs and thumps…seems our spot is below a number of pine trees and at this time of year, they are dropping super sap laden pinecones… thump… sticky sap… thump… maybe we need to rethink this…  So we move to the site next door without the sappy pinecone bombs!

 

Katahdin from behind the visitor center

We’re only here for a couple of days to get close to the northern terminus of the AT. We have already decided that climbing Mt. Katahdin is NOT in our immediate or any future, but we are willing and able to hike and explore the area leading up to Katahdin.

At the visitor center we chat with the ranger and indicate that we are interested in some moderate hikes.  We get a map and some hiking recommendations and take a few photos of Katahdin from behind the visitor center. 

Baxter State Park is for hiking and camping, with limited vehicle access, (Dimples is too long and wide to be allowed in the park) no services and unreliable cell coverage.  There is a paved road into the park to a tollbooth.  Here we pay our $14.00 out of state visitor fee for a full day’s use of the park and are given a pass.

 

Sandy pond

Just past the tollbooth the road splits and is no longer paved.  We take the east fork for about eight miles to the end at the Roaring Brook Campground.  From here we hike to Sandy Stream Pond.  The path takes us through forest and over wetlands and along the shore of Sandy Stream Pond with great views of the eastern side of the mountains.  We stop at the Big Rock viewpoint; an aptly named big rock along the shore and a great place to sit and watch for moose.  No moose today, just a couple of ducks out on the pond.

 

view of Katahdin
from the top of
Little Niagara

Next we drive back around to the west fork of the park road to Daicey Pond.  Here we hike along the Appalachian Trail to little and big Niagara Falls.  Both sets of falls are pretty impressive, but there is no access to the bottoms of either falls, so photos are tough.  At Little Niagara there are large stones that extend out at the top of the falls. It’s a bit of a scramble to get out there, but the view up the Nesowadnehunk Stream to Mt. Katahdin is worth it.

As we are hiking here we meet up with a few AT through hikers. (We actually smell them before we see them LOL.)  This is their last few miles before making the ascent of Katahdin and completing their journey. Some seem excited to be finishing and others dazed and exhausted.  We have to admire them for this accomplishment.  They have been hiking for an average of five to seven months, have covered over 2,000 miles and have accomplished something that over seventy percent of hikers who attempt the trail fail.  On our way out of the park we stop to turn in our pass and the ranger asks if we saw any moose, “No” we reply, “Only some chipmunks and a frog.”

 

Baxter Wildlife

On our second day here it rains all day, so we hang out in the lodge using their WIFI until the power goes out. So we go back to Dimples.  When the power comes back on we head back over to the lodge to use the WIFI for a bit before having dinner.  While there, the chef brings out a new roasted beet salad creation for the Inn manager to taste.  We can’t ignore the ohhs and ahhs.  We’ve heard that the food is good here and now we are really looking forward to dinner.

There are two dining options, Fredricka’s for an intimate dining experience and The Loose Moose Bar and Grille for a more social experience.  Both restaurants offer menus created by executive chef Matteo Proctor and diners can order off either menu regardless where they are dining.  We opt to dine in the Grille.  After perusing the menus we ask about the beet salad.  It’s tomorrows special, but the chef will prepare it for us tonight.  We also order a fresh Maine crab cake with roasted corn succotash and spicy sriracha aioli and haddock stew and fresh focaccia bread.  The beet salad is amazing, the haddock stew creamy and full of flavor and the fresh focaccia light and savory.  The crab cake tasted less than fresh and a bit blackened but the corn and aioli were excellent.  They also have a good selection of local beers on tap and a full bar.

We hoped that the weather would cooperate so we could take a flight over Mt. Katahdin, but the day we go hiking, there are no flights over the mountain, the next day it’s raining and the last morning, the winds are too high to fly safely.  So we bid adieu to the Northern Terminus of the AT and start heading southwest.  We do a quick overnight in Skowhegan, Maine at the Two Rivers Campground and then continue on into New Hampshire…

k

THE ADVENTURES OF DAVE AND DIMPLES VOL 3.13

DOWNEAST ARTS: FINE, FOLK AND INDUSTRIAL

Eastport, ME
Schoodic Sculpture Tour

While we are visiting the Bartlett Winery, Kathe Bartlett tells us about the Schoodic Sculpture Symposium. We’ve seen some of the huge granite sculptures during our travels in eastern Maine so we head over to the Symposium. 

The Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium is a biennial cultural event that brings artists, communities and visitors together to create a public sculpture collection in eastern Maine.  To date they have completed 27 installations from Bangor to Eastport and created the Schoodic Sculpture Tour.  This year is the fifth symposium and possibly the last, unless they can expand the geography of the tour to include other areas of Maine.  Seven sculptors from Maine and around the world are chosen from a field of 190+ applicants.  They come together for six weeks during the northeast summer to saw, chop, chisel, grind and polish massive blocks of granite.  We are awestruck by the scale and complexity of these monuments and the men and women manipulating this medium.  This open-air studio is totally accessible; we can walk around and through the work area and talk to the artists as they work. It’s noisy, dusty, muddy and thoroughly fascinating.

From Left to Right – Top to Bottom:  Bertha Shortis (Switzerland), Matthew Foster (Maine), Kyoung Uk Min (South Korea), Miles Chapin (Maine), Valerian Jikia (Republic of Georgia), Robert Leverich (Washington), Roy Patterson (Maine)

Every time we head east along Highway 1, we pass a huge steel building with CHAINSAW SAWYER ARTIST LIVE SHOW in bold red print and a huge bald eagle grasping two chainsaws in it’s talons painted on the side.  There is also a handmade sign with a list of chainsaw awe inspiring accomplishments.  Try as we might, we can no longer resist the lure of this roadside attraction.  Every evening at 7, for the mere cost of ten dollars per adult Ray Murphy puts on his chainsaw-sawing extravaganza.

We arrive a little before seven and we are the only ones here besides Ray and his assistant.  Ray greets us with a warm handshake and a hug.  He tells us a bit about his history; starting at the age of ten, he picked up his dad’s chainsaw and cut his name into a piece of wood and chainsaw art was invented.  As a teenager, he tried to enter one of his 100% cut by a chainsaw pieces in a carving contest and was rejected because the piece was too crude and the chainsaw was not an appropriate carving tool.  So Ray rejected the term carver and calls himself a Chainsaw Sawyer Artist TM, one who creates art only with a chainsaw. He shows us some of his commissioned work.  His specialties are eagles. President Reagan had one of Ray’s eagles in the white house during his term.  His feats are listed in Ripley’s Believe It or Not and he was a topic in the 1984 version of Trivial Pursuit.  After checking out the gift shop we all head over to the theatre for the show.

The theatre seats 400 but Ray freely admits that he has never had anywhere near that many people to one of his shows. Even though there are only two of us, Ray seems excited to get on with the show.  We take our seats in the front row and Ray enters the sawing booth.  It’s a sound proof, ventilated room with a bulletproof glass front and a camera inside that sends video to a wide screen mounted above the room. 

The house lights dim and the assistant reads about Ray’s history.  Ray comes out and sits with us in the audience; he makes a few adjustments to the sound and then enters the booth.  He starts the saw (we can’t hear or smell it) and proceeds to attack a piece of wood. In a matter of minutes he has created a table, two chairs, a hamburger (top and bottom bun and the patty) a pile of fries and a squirrel. Then he proceeds to saw 50 NUMBERS and THE ALPHABET on a Popsicle stick, my name on a number 2 pencil, Chris’ name on a wooden belt buckle, (while he’s wearing it,) the numbers 1 to 14 on a toothpick and a collection of animals and shape - some sawn with two chainsaws at the same time.  All of the art is given away to the audience (with the exception of the toothpick) and we come out with the squirrel, Popsicle stick, pencil, personalized belt buckle and a crescent moon carving.  (Could have had all of it but that just seems greedy and we have no space for it.)  The show is well worth the price of admission.  Ray is a true entertainer… Just don’t call him a carver.

A fellow visitor to the Schoodic Symposium mentioned that he was headed over to Lunaform to pick up a couple of pots.  A few days later we notice a sign on Hwy 1 – “Lunaform first left after the bridge.”  So we take that first left and follow the signs into the forest to a Japanese Style building.  It’s all very Zen with large urns and planters set artistically around the grounds.  At the studio we are greeted by one of the workers who invites us in, and answers our questions about what they produce and how they do it and hands us a couple of catalogues. (Silly us… we thought it was a pottery studio…) 

Lunaform LLC creates hand-turned, dry-packed concrete garden urns, planters, pots and more ranging from colossal 1,500-pound planters to their small works – 210-pound knee high “Luna” urns, the company’s namesake piece.  Their technique creates seamless works of concrete that are steel reinforced.  All of the pieces are beautifully designed and they are the only ones in the country doing it.  

When we arrive they are in the process of unmolding pieces that cured over the weekend.  Next we are shown the curing room and the paint studio.  The colorist explains her processes and shows us some of the finishes and explains the processes to achieve them.  Then we are encouraged to wander around the buildings to see the wide variety of pieces they produce. During these wanderings we meet one of the owners, Dan.  He shows us an Asian inspired LED light fixture that they are working on. 

Pulling into an RV park and setting out a couple of 1,500 lb. urns around Dimples, instead of some neon whirligigs or plastic pink flamingos… that would be sweet… now… if they only made them in Styrofoam…

THE ADVENTURES OF DAVE AND DIMPLES VOL 3.12