Month: September 2012

Bon Voyage


click image for biggie size

Brother Paul, Donna and I set sail back to the mainland this morning on the Hardy III and while the seas were not nearly as rough as the trip out, they were still rolling some. The visibility, was if anything worse, as fog, thick as pea soup, surrounded the ship until about 100 yards from our destination of New Harbor when the sky turned a beautiful blue.

We, along with the other dozen or so passengers, were given a rousing send off by the cousins and various hangers-on at the dock. We parted ways thoroughly bitten by the Monhegan bug, vowing to return next year or at least a lot sooner than the 15 years since our last visit.

Monhegan Island Caching

There are five geocaches on Monhegan and we found all of them. Yesterday after lunch we did a south island 2.4 mile loop (green) and found the two there. One was a virtual that just required a picture, but the other, which was not too far away was a small tupperware.

This morning after breakfast we did a north island loop and found 2 more. The one at the top of the island was a 50cal ammo can and the other was a small lock-n-lock. We then had some lunch and finished number 5 which was back uphill at the lighthouse in an old popup hand-wipe canister. Today’s mileage was an even 6 miles.

Monhegan Island is 3/4 of a mile wide and 1-3/4 long and has 17 miles of trails for exploring. The trails range from hard pack “roads” to well worn trails through woods to scrambling along rocks to dodging streams. We have trampled on about half of the trails in finding the geocaches, our next visit we’ll probably explore the rest.

Mr. Miata’s Wild Ride

We made the trip to Monhegan Island in small craft warnings aboard the Hardy III. Sixty feet seems like more like a big craft to me, but trust me in 8 to 10 foot seas it is rather small. Your author, through only shear force of will and some Gin Gins candies, managed to not get sea sick. Donna and brother Paul seemed unfazed by the tossing and turn which I accredit to the fact that they had been passengers in the Purple Whale while barreling down Maine 32 to New Harbor and been immunized to whoopty-doos and g-forges on the way to New Harbor.

After yesterday’s washout of a day and today’s forecast of a repeat, we were pleasantly surprised to find nearly perfect weather on the island this afternoon. It is supposed to be great tomorrow too. And more importantly great as well Friday morning for our return trip to the mainland about the tiny ship Hardy III.

Ossipee

No, that is not what Jar Jar Binks says when he is going #1, but a small town in New Hampshire that we passed through today. It was raining in Ossipee, but that was not a big change, because it rained on us practically all day, from the eastern border of Vermont, all across New Hampshire and then all through Maine one side to the other.

It finally quit after our lobster roll dinner at Shaw’s Fish & Lobster Wharf Restaurant in New Harbor. So afterwards we hopped in the car and headed over to Pemaquid Point Lighthouse to watch the tide come in.

22,000 Blocks of Dolomite & A Couple Of Covered Bridges

Somewhere along US7 in the Massachusetts Berkshires the Purple Whale inched past the 22,000 mile mark.

We climbed three towers today, the:

Winsted Civil War Monument, the tower at the top of Haystack Mountain and the elevator assisted ascent of the Bennington Battle Monument.

And we photographed two covered bridges, one in Sheffield, MA and, as required by law, this one from Vermont:

Upper Falls near Downers, VT.

Mauch Chunk

Both of us tire of the interstate travel, either as driver or as passenger, just sometimes it doesn’t make sense. Today was one of those days, but we still managed to get in a few back road miles. While traveling up I-81 in Pennsylvania on our way to I-84 Donna directed me to a road that appeared to be a shortcut, and it was a more direct route, but it probably didn’t save any time, still it was well worth the diversion.

We passed through Hometown, PA which is not to say my hometown, but just a town called Hometown. It did serendipitously take us through a small town that had been renamed for the man King Gustav V of Sweden called the greatest athlete in the world, Jim Thorpe. If you are wondering how the town got his name, even though Jim never set foot in while he was alive, read the explanation on Wikipedia.

We made a brief stop in Sparrow Hill, NY to visit with an older “cousin” of Donna’s, they share related grandmothers or something, who she has only exchanged cards with. She and her husband live in an awesome little place back in the woods that the cousin’s father built that overlooks the Delaware River (which can only be seen in the winter for all the trees.)

After a brief visit with them we headed back down to I-84 to continue our drive to the ex-Hardware Capital City of the World and my real hometown, New Britain, CT. Boy are we glad we don’t live around here, the traffic on I-84 not long after we entered Connecticut came to a grinding halt, all 3 lanes. It took about 30 minutes to creep 5 miles and then as magically as it appeared, it disappeared.

Back In Time

On our run to The Great Meadow near the city of The Plains to go to the Virginia Scottish Games we had to slow down and make a small detour into the parking lot of Dinosaur Land because the Purple Whale just loves dinosaurs and wanted his picture taken with one.

We spent the entire day listening to solo bagpipes and bands of bagpipes with drums and my ears are still buzzing. Even though I took it off a couple of hours ago, I still feel like I have my ball cap on. We were met at the games by Donna’s cousins Laurie and Susie (daughters of Donna’s father’s brother.) We all came here to see her cousins Duncan and Jimmy (sons of Donna’s father’s sister) who are pipers extraordinaire, they both play in the solo competition and judge the band competition.

While Duncan & Jimmy played and judged we (Susie, Laurie, Howard, Laurie’s beau, Donna and I) watched big guys throw big rocks and big telephone poles, watched dogs herd sheep, kids play games, ate fish and chips and meat pies, drank copious amounts of water and shopped for kilts. When we all went our separate ways at the end of the day, the six cousins were scheming to do this again and to try and get more of their kinfolk to join them.

Guid cheerio the nou! See ye efter!