Gloucester

It's a curious thing that only later in my life have I become interested in exploring the eastern reaches of my home state. Jeannine and I just got back from staying two nights in Gloucester, MA, a place I think I may have passed through once, many years ago. It's a famous sea town north of Boston, in a little protruding bump of the coastline to which I have never really paid much attention before.

But this trip was not just to put our tourist hats on, though we did do that also. Jeannine has a friend who lives in the area, Pat Lowery Collins, a poet/novelist/painter, and Pat had invited us to see her home and studio and join her for lunch. And she had a show of some of her landscape work hanging at the library in Gloucester, so we wanted to see that, too.

Jeannine found what looked to be a nice inn near a section of the shoreline called "Bass Rocks" -- NOT named after the fish, as I first supposed, but by the sounds made by the waves as they pound against and rush under some of the rock formations. We managed to experience this auditory marvel on our last day -- here's a shot of Jeannine standing on those selfsame Bass Rocks...

... and it was quite thrilling to hear the powerful low rumbling notes which sounded like subterranean thunder.

One place we wanted to check out was a spot called Halibut Point -- curiously, it came up in conversation with our friends Jesse and Megan at their baby shower a day earlier, and also on that same day while Jeannine was reminiscing with her sister Margaret, who, with her daughter Cathy, was visiting us for a few days.
Halibut Point is an area on the coast near Rockport, the next town north of Gloucester, and features a huge granite quarry, just a little bit inland from the shore, now half-filled with water, with chunks of quarried granite randomly strewn about. It is quite impressive, and a bit eerie.

Jeannine and I walked about halfway around the quarry, then decided to head down to the shore and see some waves. We found a likely-looking path and wandered down to an area with some beautiful rock formations.

Off to the left, there was this gigantic pile of what looked like cast-off or undesirable pieces of granite. I was hoping to find out more about this titanic heap when we went to the visitors' center at Halibut Point, but sadly that was closed. I suppose I could probably do some online research to discover the whole story behind it.

After walking on the beach rocks for a bit, we decided to head back up to the quarry to complete our perambulation of its circumference, but -- due to the fact that almost all of the little paths through the scrubby bushes looked very similar to each other, and there was almost no useful signage -- we got lost, and it took us another twenty minutes or so to wander our way back to the path around the quarry. But it was worth it, because it is quite a beautiful place.

(There were a few moments when I found myself thinking about the lake into which Charlton Heston's spaceship crashes in beginning of the first "Planet of the Apes" movie, because parts of this quarry had similar coloration. Or so I remember it, anyway.)

The following day we went to see Pat's paintings at the Gloucester Lyceum and Sawyer Free Library. I say "paintings", and that is how Pat refers to them, but they were all (except for one) not rendered in paint, but instead with pastels. Here's a shot of some of the pieces on display:

No matter the medium, they were all beautiful, capturing the essence of that shore zone where the rocks meet the sand and the surf. (I'm happy to say that one of them will be hanging in our house in the near future.)

After that, we tried to go to the Cape Ann Museum, which was right around the corner from the library,  but they were closed on Mondays. So we decided to walk around Gloucester a bit, do the tourist thing for a while, and found ourselves shortly thereafter admiring the famous statue of the Gloucester fisherman…

… and nearby, the more recent companion piece dedicated to the wives and families of those same fishermen.

Then it was time to wend our way to Pat's house by the ocean (thank you, Honda GPS navigation system!), where we were greeted warmly and given a great lunch, as well as a tour of her studio and writing room, both of which (especially her studio) seemed to me to be fantastic work spaces. After hanging out and chatting with Pat for a while, we took a walk down to the beautiful beach which is no more than a few hundred feet from her place.

Walking around for a few hours in the extremely bright sun had tired us out somewhat, so we headed back to the hotel to take a break for a bit, before trying to find an appropriate place for dinner. And I lucked out in a quick online search, because I came up with "My Place by the Sea" in Rockport, which turned out to be a wonderful restaurant right on the water with great views, food and service.

(I should mention that before going to dinner, we took a quick dip in the hotel pool -- we were feeling too beat to walk the mile and a half to the beach down the road -- and while still wet from that swim, I walked across the road to the ocean, and tested out a new camera which allows for taking pictures underwater. It was fun, and a few of them looked pretty good, but I can tell I need to practice some more to get the best shots.)

(I had to take a photo of this seaweed I saw while doing that -- it was so incredibly green and bright.)

        After dinner, while wandering around downtown Rockport, looking into various small shops, I happened across the following view down an alleyway -- what I think of as the quintessentially small town New England harbor scene.

         And on another street, we ran across this odd but cute sculpture titled "Baby and Frog" by Richard Recchia.

On our last day in Gloucester, we did make it to the Cape Ann Museum, and while not a huge place, it was still fascinating to look through. They had lots of stuff about the fishing industry in Gloucester, including a cool diorama representing the docks and boats of Gloucester, which Jeannine pointed out to me had been shown at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

(I have been fascinated by that World's Fair since reading Erik Larson's book "The Devil in the White City" a few years ago, and it was fun to imagine this diorama having been part of that historic event.)

Another interesting piece that Jeannine pointed out to me was a plaster model made by Leonard Craske, the sculptor of the "Gloucester Fisherman's Memorial" statue we'd visited the previous day. Apparently, he'd had the idea to do a companion piece honoring the fishermen's families, but had not been able to secure the funding to produce it. It's interesting to consider this piece's similarities to -- and differences from -- the statue that was eventually created and installed to commemorate the families of the fishermen.

The visit to the museum marked the end of our stay in Gloucester, but we had one more stop on the way home that promised to be fun -- we had seen the signs for this place on our drive out to Gloucester, and on the way back, I suggested to Jeannine that we stop there for lunch. It's a restaurant called "The Old Mill" in Westminster, MA, and Jeannine remembered going there with her grandparents when she was young. She recalled with fondness that there was a waterfall, and a wooden bridge, and a pond with ducks that a little girl could feed.

And so there were, still. -- PL

A quick trip to the seacoast, and seeing the last "Frost Place"

Well, we finally did it -- the "Robert Frost House Trifecta". 

Yes, Jeannine and I just visited the third and last of the historic Robert Frost homesteads in New England, the first two being the Stone House in South Shaftsbury, Vermont and the Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire. The third and last was actually the first, chronologically, in Frost's life, and is in Derry, New Hampshire.

We had decided on the spur of the moment to take a quick trip to the New Hampshire seacoast this past weekend, and had a devil of a time finding lodging. We were hoping to get a room in some hotel with an ocean view, but there were none to be had (none that we could find, anyway), and even some of the usual places in Portsmouth which don't have ocean views were completely booked up.

(We later discovered that part of the reason for that was the fact that Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth was hosting an air show.. and throughout the time we were there, we would often hear the thunderous shrieks of fighter jets and other aircraft overhead. Unfortunately for the fans who attended, the overcast skies cut down on the visibility of the planes... though at one point during a break in the clouds I thought I saw a cool WWII-vintage plane which I think was a P-51 Mustang.)

Finally, Jeannine tracked down a room at a Holiday Inn, and we threw our stuff in the truck and took off. It was later than we usually get on the road for these types of trips, so we didn't get to the seacoast until dark. Part of the reason for that is the fact that we made two stops on the way, one for supper at the High Tide Takeout in Hillsborough, NH (one of my favorite places to eat on the road, and always satisfying), and again a little later for dessert at a place called (I think) Johnson's Dairy Bar, situated not too far east of Concord, NH on Route 4. I'd wanted to stop at this place for years, as I would often drive past it on my way to or from the seacoast, but never had. 

And if you like your ice cream cones big -- I mean HUGE -- this is definitely the place to go. I ordered a kiddie-sized vanilla soft serve for Jeannine and a small twist soft serve for me. The "kiddie" sized cone was what would be a "large' at any dairy bar I'd ever been to, and the "small" was even larger. Crazy! And the hard ice cream cones they were serving were no different.

It was tough, but we both managed to finish off our cones, and continued on to the coast, where we had a nice walk on the sands of Jenness Beach in New Hampshire, enjoying the full moon's light on the waves and the beach.

The following day, while discussing where to go for breakfast and doing some web searching for suggestions, I stumbled upon a restaurant that Jeannine and I used to go to when we lived in Dover, on those occasions when we felt we had enough money to treat ourselves to a breakfast that we didn't make ourselves. It was called "The Wooden Spoon", and back then it was situated right in the middle of downtown Dover, about a fifteen minute walk from our house. Jeannine used to love the muffins they made there, and I have to agree -- they were very good (though not, I must hasten to add, as good as the ones Jeannine bakes). Apparently, over the twenty-seven (yikes!) years since we lived in Dover, the "Spoon" had moved (to Somersworth, NH, the next town north of Dover) and aquired new owners. 

We tracked it down to its new location in the Tri-City Plaza in Somersworth, and although the ambiance was different from the old location (and a little lacking, if you must know, though the people working there were perfectly nice) and sadly, that day they had no muffins! But I did see this thing on the menu that I wanted to try along with my eggs and taters breakfast -- a grilled cinnamon roll.

It was yummy!

We followed this breakfast adventure down memory lane with a trip out to New Castle, NH on our bicycles, which I'd brought with us in the back of the truck. We parked in Portsmouth, and had a great ride out to New Castle. Here's a photo of my right ear and Jeannine following me -- one of my one-handed over-the-shoulder shots, which sometimes work -- as we pedaled over one of the several bridges to New Castle.

(I do want to mention one thing about that bicycle ride -- Jeannine was a little nervous about bicycling on that somewhat-narrow road, with all the cars that pass by on it, but I have to say that every car that went by gave us a wide berth. The drivers seemed to be, without exception, very respectful of bicyclists, which is, sadly, not always the case. But it certainly made this ride a lot less harrowing than it could have been.)

We stopped at a beautiful small park right next to the ocean and enjoyed looking at the water and the rocks and sea grass…

… and smelling the salt air while sitting on the bench under this tree.

After soaking up the ocean ambiance for a while, we decided to continue on another quarter of a mile or so to Fort Stark, the ruined fort I wrote about on this blog several entries ago. I took some more shots from a slightly different perspective, and stitched them together into this small panorama.

The following day was not so pleasant, weather-wise -- it was raining hard from the time we awoke and didn't really let up for the rest of the day, which made our drive to Derry, NH, to see the Robert Frost farm not that much fun. But once there, and fortified with raincoat and umbrella, we enjoyed walking around the property on a short trail through the field and woods. Here's Jeannine posing for me on a little bridge over a stream on the trail…

… and a view from the far end of the field looking back toward the house.

The young man we'd talked to in the gift shop at the farm before going out on our walk -- Alex, I think his name was -- told us that before the house was bought and restored as a Robert Frost museum, it -- and the property around it -- had been owned by the "Frosty Acres Automobile Graveyard". ("Frosty Acres"… get it?) Here's a photo Alex showed us from those days -- you can make out the Frost house in the background.

Unlike the other two Frost houses, where you could wander around as you liked inside, here a guided tour was required to see the inside of the house. We weren't really into being part of a big group, but as it turned out, Alex offered to give us a "lightning tour" of the house, which worked out great.

The first thing he showed us was probably my favorite part of the tour -- the "privy" in what I guess would be called a "mudroom" today. It's interesting in that it is a "two-seater" and the seats are side-by-side with nothing in between them. 

I mentioned to Alex that it reminded me of one of those old "Saturday Night Live" faux commercials -- this one for a product called "The Love Toilet", which was a two-person toilet in the shape of the classic love seat. He remembered it right away, even reciting the ad slogan they'd made up.

Moving on from the mudroom, we went into the kitchen, where we were told that it is thought that Frost wrote a considerable amount of his poetry at the table in this photo.

The rest of the house was somewhat unremarkable, but still interesting to see and imagine what it was like when Frost lived there. I should also point out that, like when we visited the Frost place in Franconia on another rainy day, I was impressed that so many people would show up on a bad weather day to see the place -- I think there were probably about a dozen or so other visitors to the Derry house during the short time we were there.

But now that we've seen all three Frost places, what next? I guess we need to find another series of poet's or writer's house to visit. I should ask Jeannine if she has any ideas. -- PL

... to Dover, NH, and points north in Maine

So, after escaping from Boston, Jeannine and I headed north, to our old "stomping grounds" of the Dover/Portsmouth area. We were pretty hungry, so instead of heading directly to our place of lodging -- the Cliff House in Ogunquit, ME -- we stopped off at one of our favorite seafood restaurants, Newicks, in Dover. We got great seats near a window and had Newicks' always-fresh seafood.

It had been some time since I'd stayed at the Cliff House with Jeannine, and it had changed quite a bit, including a whole new building (which is where we were staying). We had a nice view of the ocean from the balcony off our room, even though -- at least early each morning -- the ocean was covered in fog, as you can see in this view from the balcony.

But within a few hours, it cleared up and we could sit out there and watch the waves. I spent quite a bit of time wandering around on the rocks -- not on these vertical rocks…

… which are the cliffs from which the Cliff House derives its name, but on the safer, more navigable rocks to either side of the cliffs. I took many photos of interesting rocks, and did a little bit of sketching. Actually, I only did two sketches, and here they are.

I was hoping to do more, but I was too lazy.

I did manage to capture a few decent shots of waves -- here's one I shot from our balcony using the camera's zoom lens (love the colors)…

… and another bit of "crashing wave action" caught by the camera's high-speed "burst" function.

I even got myself in one shot. 

I never get tired of looking at these rocks by the ocean. They fascinate me with their shapes, patterns, and colors.

At one point -- I think it was on our first day there -- I was out on the rocks looking for good angles in the morning, while there was still quite a bit of mist on the ocean, when I heard the sound of a boat engine, and this lobster boat came slowly chugging out of the mist.

It's certainly not a rare sight on the coast of Maine…

… but I thought it was kind of cool.

Sometimes the rocks can seem barren, almost a moonscape, devoid of life… but then you look a bit closer, and there is quite a bit of life. This large spider (one of many on the rocks) paused in its rapid scurrying to and fro to allow me to snap a portrait shot…

… and one day on the way back to our room, I spotted these bluets growing among the rocks…

… and this bright lichen growing ON the rocks.

We had a great time, and ate lots of good food -- even went to "Johnny's Oarweed" in Perkins Cove in Ogunquit, the restaurant at which a pre-TMNT Kevin Eastman once worked as a lobster cook, and we had a lovely meal on a beautiful day sitting outside by the ocean.

However, I neglected to do one important thing while we were there, and I regret it -- I didn't call my pal Steve Lavigne to see if we could get together. Sorry, Steve! -- PL

Weekend in New Hampshire (and Maine)

This past weekend, my wife went out to Minneapolis to visit a family friend and attend a convention of like-minded bloggers. I would have loved to have gone with her, but in spite of my best efforts, it just didn't work out. So while she was in the midwest having fun, I decided that rather than be miserable and lonely at home, I could be miserable and lonely* somewhere more interesting and potentially distracting in a good way. So I chose to spend those days by myself in the Dover, NH area.

I stayed in Portsmouth, but I made trips to some of our our old haunts, favorite areas on the seacoast as well as Dover itself and the neighboring town of Durham. It was interesting to walk around Dover and see what has changed -- not much, I think. The ice cream parlor that we used to enjoy going to is no longer there, replaced by a nifty little cafe where I ate two of my lunches that weekend, and they were both excellent. I walked over to the good ol' Dover Public Library, which we used quite a bit when we lived there…

… and when I went inside to poke around, I was happy to see that they still had the "magazine swap" shelf that I so enjoyed back in the early 1980's -- it was a great way to recycle your old magazines. (Although i think it may have been called a magazine EXCHANGE back then… but I could be confusing it with a similar thing at the Sharon, CT library some time later.)

Looking around the library, I found Jeannine's latest book, "Borrowed Names", shelved in the poetry for young adults section. That's it, fourth from the left.

Here's a shot of the cover of "Borrowed Names".

(By the way -- and I say this in a completely unbiased way -- it's a great book. Check it out!)


Continuing my stroll around Dover, I took one street that led to this view…

… a bit of interesting scenery I don't recall from our days in Dover. Maybe we never walked up that street.

After a couple of hours of reminiscing, I drove out to Ogunquit, ME, where I walked on part of the fabled "Marginal Way", and I was reminded of why I prefer the coast of Maine to the coast of Cape Cod (well, to be fair, the parts of the coast of Cape Cod that I saw a couple of weeks ago)...

... great rocks! You can't really see it in the photo below, but the stiff breeze was blowing spray off the white-capped waves -- very dramatic!

I did sit down and do a little sketching of some of the rocks, but it was pretty cold and breezy, so I only did one drawing. I have to spend more time up there in the warm parts of the year, I think.

The next day I decided to take a drive up to one of our favorite beaches, Long Sands in York… so named because it's, well, a long, sandy beach. I remembered that the last time we walked on it,  the sand was not very squishy underfoot, but firm… and I started thinking that MAYBE it would be firm enough to support me and my bicycle. So I parked near one end of the beach, carried my bike down the steps to the sand, and started riding. And it was GREAT! I think -- no, I KNOW -- that this was the most fun I had all weekend. I spent probably an hour riding up and down the beach, dodging seagulls and sandpipers, going in and out of the surf, and watching my shadow, cast by the setting sun.

It was almost too picturesque, and shortly made even MORE so by the rising of the moon just off Nubble Point near the lighthouse. I took a few photos of this scene using the zoom lens on my camera (which is why the moon looks so huge, I think), and put them together into this little panorama.

On my last day of this impromptu vacation, I headed up a little further into Maine, to drop in unannounced on Steve Lavigne and his family. I think I surprised the heck out of him, but we had a nice visit. Then I decided to drive back to Dover one last time, because i had a mission there.

You see, on my way up on Friday, I had stopped at a general store called Calef's just outside Dover, and picked up a few postcards which I intended to mail to Jeannine. One of them featured a cool aerial photo of Dover, and I was hoping to see if our old house was, by some chance, included in the image. So I was studying it, and for some reason, I just couldn't figure out exactly from which direction the photo was taken… which was a little odd, because I am pretty familiar with the layout of downtown Dover. So I once again walked around the streets of Dover, trying to pick out significant landmarks and compare them to the tiny images in the postcard, attempting to get my bearings.

And after about ten minutes of this, it hit me -- the photo was REVERSED! I found it kind of surprising that just reversing the image would throw me off so much, but it did. (When I got home, I scanned the postcard, flipped in in Photoshop, and instantly everything fell into place and made sense.) Sadly, our old neighborhood was just out of shot in the postcard's aerial image.

On the drive back home, I decided to take a spin through nearby Durham, NH, and had to stop to take a photo of this fabulous tree, which just at the moment I was driving by happened to be lit up perfectly by the sun. It was simply blazing. -- PL

(*Full disclosure: I was not actually miserable. -- PL)