Walking the trails of Durham

 

Note: Bob and Jen both contributed to writing this entry, so the “I” referred to below may not always be the same person.  You can play a fun game trying to figure it out from context clues, such as passion for composting.

Traveling isn’t happening so much these days, so we’ve been inspired to seek out adventures closer to home.  For Christmas, we draw names and create homemade presents each year — and this year, one of Bob’s gifts to me was a full set of Durham/UNH trail maps.  So many miles and miles of trails!  The Great Bay, rivers, woods, wetlands, fields — Durham has it all.  We are very fortunate to live where we do.

Our goal for 2021 is to walk every one of them.  You’d think, having lived here almost 20 years, that we would have done this already, but we get into the habit of going to the same places over and over, and in fact there are several places we’ve never visited at all.  With Daisy’s steadfast accompaniment, we feel ready for the task.

December 29, 2020 – Kingman Farm

OK, we cheated a bit and got a slight head start in 2020.  Also, this one is technically in Madbury, but it’s UNH land so we’re still counting it.

We started in the northern section, where we’ve never really visited.  Much of our route wound along the Bellamy River, before eventually looping inland.  We navigated the marked trails quite capabably — until we didn’t.  Somewhere between turning right at the compost field (we saved that attraction for another hike) and rejoining the river-side loop, the trail disappeard.

The terrain of the map just did not match the terrain of the trail.  There was some bushwacking, unfortunately; but nobody panicked.  We soon found our way back to the river and completed the journey more or less like we intended.

January 3, 2021,  More of Kingman Farm

This time we approached the Kingman Farm from the Hicks Hill trail head behind Madbury Town Hall.  It was less than a week after our first hike, and we were less than two miles away from the Bellamy River trail head, but things were very different this time around.  Because  we had several inches of snow over New Year’s, the mood now was definitely more wintery.

The arrow points to compost.

Today’s hike would take us to the highly anticipated Compost Field marked on the map (composting is one of my favorite pastimes), but it would also take us to the top of Hicks Hill, also known as Chief Moharimet’s Hill.  Could we make it up the snowy hill without microspikes?  We would just have to give it a try and find out.

But we made sure to visit the Composting Field first just in case an avalanche or something prematurely ended our lives.  If we never made it out of the woods, at least we would have seen the Composting Field.  And, wouldn’t you know, the place did not disappoint.  It was a two- or three-acre clearing with a half dozen 100-yard-long berms of some sort of material, just sitting there, rotting wonderfully.  It was difficult to tell what was actually composting because of the snow.  Kingman Farm is associated with the university, so it was probably food scraps from dining halls, and maybe the hay-strewn by-products of the horse and cow barns.  Really cool stuff.   We didn’t dig around because we didn’t want to disturb the composting.

There were several other people in the clearing with us, including a few other dog walkers and  two or three trail runners.  The latter group were really taking their chances on this day.  The Composting Field — possibly because of the slightly raised temperatures emanating from the biological processes taking place — seems to have melted and re-frozen several times.  The walking paths were covered in many places by two inches of slick ice.  It was tough to walk on;  running was out of the question for us.  Plus, who wants to hurry through a compost field?

We finally tore ourselves away and wandered through a more traditional wooded setting.  There was a slight rise for a while as we curved around back toward the Madbury Town Hall.  Then, the land dropped away and rose again on the other side of a hidden valley.  We had the option of a straight-up path, but we chose the switchback trail because of the snow, and we made it up the far side of the valley quite comfortably.  It was not nearly as icy here as it was on the Composting Field, thankfully.

Atop Hicks Hill

The top of the hill, which we had seen behind the town hall many times — and maybe even climbed once — boasted some benches and a geological marker, though not much in the way of views.  Nevertheless, it was pretty, young-growth forest and well maintained trails that were forgiving as we climbed down the far side and finished our loop.

We returned to our car having traveled most of the trails on this side of the Kingman Farm property, but the map shows there still are several miles of trails on the other side of the farm.  The tricky thing might be finding out how to access those trails.  There used to be parking spaces on route 155, but that seems to have been shut down at the same time that a large fence was erected around the working part of the farm.  We may have to re-trace some of our steps to get to the unexplored parts.

Today’s hike in purple

Before we decide on that, though, we might step away from Kingman Farm and see what trails the other preserves and conservation have to offer.  There are more than 40 miles of trails left, after all.

 

 

 

 

January 9, 2021,  Doe Farm to Foss Farm/Steven’s Woods to Durham Greenway

Look closely for evidence of trailblazing.

Don’t be fooled by the fact that we’re walking on trails only a few miles from our house.  The opportunity to get lost or side-tracked during this project is quite real.   Even with a pretty good familiarity with our surroundings.  Even with maps.

Nice and open under the power lines

Our maps — both from the town of Durham and from UNH clearly indicated a path connecting Doe Farm, off Bennett Road, with Foss Farm, near Mill Street.  But we can now say with certainty that they don’t list every path connecting the two preserves.

We had trouble following the trail on the map.  Very soon after Zoe dropped us off in the parking lot (our plan was to hike our way downtown and then walk back up the hill to our house), we missed a turn.  Perhaps we were wrong to assume the trail followed the power lines.  Maybe it did followed the power lines for a while, but we neglected to see the turn off.

A fine turkey print

In fact, we enjoyed walking under the power lines. The ground was cleared and we could see a fair distance along the lines.   There was just a coating of snow and we saw lots of animal tracks that I photographed for school.  There were enough little brooks and puddles to jump over that we let Daisy off her leash (we didn’t see any other hikers around once we left the parking lot).

We were having such a good time, it was a bit of a surprise when we found ourselves overlooking route 108.  We had nearly walked all the way back home, without doing the downtown part.

A faint trail led off towards town and we decided to take it.   The

Somewhere between Doe Farm and downtown

snow here was unmarked by hikers’ feet.  Jen checked the picture of the map on her phone.  It didn’t look like we should be near 108 at all.  But we kept walking.  We knew where we were — sort of.  We would get to the Mill Pond Center eventually — maybe.  Those houses on the other side of the ice might be Laurel Lane.  That could be the Oyster River.   We staved off any chance of panic by feeding our curiosity.   We probably were never more than a mile and a half from our house.

Then we met a trial that actually had blazes on it.  There were footprints on the ground and a sign with the UNH logo announced an un-maintained trail.  The sign was referrring to the trail we had just walked in on.    There are more than one path connecting Doe Farm with Foss Farm (the UNH trail we found was in the Foss Farm system).  If the maps represent the 50 miles of trails our town boasts about, then they are underestimating their network.  There are 51 1/2 miles, at least.  We found more miles.

Future site of pedestrian bridge, as viewed by current pedestrians

Once in the the Foss Farm network, we saw that not only are the trails marked, they’re color coded to the map.  We really knew where we were now and we guided ourselves to the new bridge that had been assembled to connect the Foss Farm neighborhood with the Faculty neighborhood.   We had read about it in the town updates.

Then there it was in front of us, in all its silver metal glory, sitting along the driveway to the pump house on the other side of the river.  We had read that the bridge had been assembled; we had not read that it had been installed over the river, because it had not yet actaully been installed.  This is a good lesson in why we should read the town updates very closely.

Sub-urban hikers

After briefly toying with and then quickly discarding the idea of attempting to ford the river, we walked some more through the Foss Farm woods and out onto Mill Road, then into downtown and up the hill back home.   It turned out to be quite an epic walk — bypassing the bridge added another hour to a walk that was already two hours old.   Daisy was wiped out by the time we got home and so were we.

 

January 23, 2021, Longmarsh Conservation Area

One of the Longmarsh beaver ponds

The dam that holds it back

It could be said that the crown jewel of Durham-area trails is the Sweet Trail — that four miles of wild beauty that stretches into Newmarket and to the bay.  The Sweet Trail is very popular among walkers and trail runners, but most of the attention seems to sway toward the bay side of the trail, whereas we tend to gravitate to the inland terminus, the Longmarsh Conservation Area.

One of the Longmarsh beaver dams

 

Not only is it supremely accessible to us — it’s on the other side of our neighbrhood — the Longmarsh Conservation Area offers views of multiple ponds held in place by feats of natural engineering that stretch our understanding of how non-humans can alter the environment.  One beaver dam in particular should be listed as a modern marvel of the natural world.  It is about 100 yards long and four feet high at its deepest point.  Kindly bipeds have constructed a boardwalk at the base of the dam so other bipeds can walk along it, our head level with, or only slightly higher than the water in the pond.  It gives the impression that you’re swimming without getting wet.

Actually, a  full handful of beaver dams lie along the deserted section of Longmarsh Road, including this natural wonder of the world.  We also found another

Natural wonder to the left, happy hiker to the right

dam along a side trail holding back the main pond that was visible as we walked in.  Beaver lodges dot the waterscape here.

Meanwhile, if you can tear your eyes away from the natural scenes, you might find signs that this is recaptured wilderness.  The trail is wide and flanked on both sides by atrophied rock walls.  Parallel slabs of granite stand to form an ancient gate opening.

Another side trail brings us to more power lines, after leading us past a few automobiles decaying beside the path.  This used to be just another road in town, with homesteads, yards, pastures and families.  Longmarsh Road used to connect Route 108 with Durham Point Road.  Each end still represents a modern road (some of it even paved) with modern homes; but this middle stretch is gated off and open to foot and bicycle traffic only.  The forest closes in on the edges of the old road and the beaver ponds encroach on the original flow of the path.

On the return swing of the second side path, we found another rusting car and the foundation hole of an otherwise disappeared house.    A swath of bottles, cans, and metal tools surrounds the foundation, and has  just about completed the transition from trash pile to archaeological site.

I jogged this path a few dozen times last summer, but I’m happy we took the time to walk it again and look at it closely.

Janury 30, 2021, Thompson Forest 

After some of our hikes have turned into trailblazing, bushwacking affairs, it’s nice to just circum-navigate a simple loop.  Thus, the appeal of Thompson Forest off Wednesday Hill Road (especially on a very cold day where we didn’t want to have to keep stopping to pull our phones out of our pockets). It was a little more than a loop, actually.  There was a short spur that brought us to a nice picnicking spot on the shore of the Lamprey River.  It was more of a Q than a O.

But it was pretty simple to follow, with not a lot of chances to go wrong.  We started in an open, stubbly field and wound around into woods, catching a glimpse of the river through the trees.

The trail was clearly marked, even if the map was deceptive.  In parts of the walk, we were closer to the river than the diagram might have suggested.

Today we were aided by gps and cell phone technology.  Each of us downloaded a different app to help us track our travels.  After spending so much time on (or trying to reacquire) the trails, we thought it would be a good idea to use something that could map our wanderings and maybe even tell us how far we had walked.  We were pretty sure something like that existed, and we hoped we’d be able to have it at our disposal without having to pay a monthly subscription fee.

It turns out, we found two apps whose free versions fit our needs:

              

Still on the trail

Both apps track walking distance and keep a gps-rendered trail of or path.  Both apps also could be used to track biking trips. Bob’s app, which is called Map my Goals, is pictured above on the left.  It has the benefit of counting our steps.  Jen’s app, called Strava, records altitude change and features a base map that recognizes the trail we were walking on.  This last feature, which allows us to see the trail we’re supposed to be walking on and our progess in real-time, seems much better than our usual practice of taking a picture of the the map on our phone and referring to it when we got confused in the woods.  It was very helpful to see the trail — and any intersecting trails in the area, along with our location.    Strava wins out in the head-to-head comparison, for our needs, at least.

And with that, I can confidently say that we spent a nice 35 minutes or so walking 1.37 miles on this day.  We didn’t fall in the river and we didn’t stray too far from our trail.  And we even found a picnic spot for next summer.  Seems like a successful day.

 

The last hurrah

All too soon, our mini-vacation comes to an end.  After attempting unsuccessfully to cajole our kids into eating all the leftover food so we didn’t have to lug it home, we set off for Acadia one more time.  After yesterday’s tough hike, today’s ambitions were lower.  We promised an easy walk along the seaside path near the Park Loop Road.

The payoff vs. effort ratio of this one is sky-high.  Granted, you’re walking along a relatively well-traveled path that is mostly in sight of the road, but the views out over the ocean are spectacular the whole way, and there are copious opportunities to leave the main trail and climb around on rocks.  (Or, if you’re Lanie, to pretty much climb along rocks the whole way, except for towering cliff-like sections that your stodgy parents refuse to allow you to attempt.)

We worked in a visit to the famous Thunder Hole along the way, but unfortunately the tides were too low for us to hear any actual thundering.  We had to content ourselves instead with exploring the tidepools that would be covered up when the tides rose.  We also saw some rock climbers rapelling down the cliffs from sea level (an activity Zoe was supposed to get to try on a UMaine summer trip, which, like everything else, was canceled).

Eventually we left the ocean behind and made our way back to the car to drive home (a compromise between one family member who was ready to leave hours earlier and another who would have been content to hang around on the rocks for hours longer).  Bob and I are hoping to manage another quick visit in October, when ideally we’ll be coming up again to pay a visit to Zoe at college — assuming that doesn’t all turn into a pipe dream.

All that remained of vacation, beyond a four-hour drive, was a stop for a late lunch at the Sea Dog Brewery in Portland.  I’m not sure we were quite ready to be done with our getaway, but at least Daisy was happy to see us.

Triumph and disappointment

 

The theme of the day

Long-time readers may remember our last trip to Acadia, seven years ago.  The short version is that it poured rain the whole time, eventually flooding our tent, soaking all our possessions, and sending us packing a few days earlier than originally planned.  So we’ve been delighted that the weather seems to be repaying its debt this time around — with abundant sunshine, warm but not humid days, and cool, pleasant evenings.  Even the predicted hurricane only caused a bit of rain after dark.

On the other hand, not everything has gone so smoothly.  First there was yesterday’s heartbreaking popover situation.  Today we got hit by another COVID impact — lack of parking.  (I should pause here to say how impressively the park, as well as the town

When the stairs finally ended, the steeply sloping rock face was not any better.

of Bar Harbor/state of Maine, are dealing with the COVID situation.  Park buildings like the visitor center are closed, but rangers are available under outdoor tents to provide advice and answer questions.  Masks are mandatory and every business has a “No Mask, No Service” sign as well as a maximum occupancy limit — and people are more or less compliant.  So despite the town and park being pretty

crowded, and with people from all over the place, rates are still among the lowest in the country.  Businesses are able to operate and tourists are able to shop and eat out.  Quite a contrast with other vacation destinations that refused to enact any measures and then become hot spots.)

Anyway, the usual shuttlebus isn’t running this year, so everyone has to drive into the park.  It was our bad luck that the hike we’d planned — much talked-up by the friendly ranger we’d met on the way in, who generated a lot of excitement with talk of slot canyons and boulders and a long stretch of rock that you could ride down like a slide — started near the Jordan Pond House,  whose popularity once more cropped up to foil us.  (It was also unfortunate that we’re traveling with (almost) three teenagers, and so our arrival at the park wasn’t what you’d call early in the morning.)  After a frustrating hour driving around attempting to find somewhere to park, including following random people who we felt looked as though they might be returning to their cars, we had to admit defeat.

Plan B consisted of pulling into the next parking lot we came across, in the Sieur de Monts area of the park, which we hadn’t explored before.  Luckily there was a ranger on-site to advise us, and she was able to recommend a loop trail to the top of nearby Dorr Mountain.

The trail began with a long set of stone steps heading quickly up the mountain.  Then we came to the top and turned the corner, and there were more steps.  And more steps.  Basically, the entire Emery Path consisted of steps running up the side of the mountain.  We were in awe of the effort it must have taken to construct the trail (since we were finding it quite taxing just climbing it).  It was another one of those magical Acadia trails that provide views the whole way, as we were hugging the outside of the mountain throughout.  Zoe and I both found it oddly reminiscent of the hike to the Sun Gate at Machu Picchu, though the environments were certainly very different.

As we continued around the loop we were impressed with the variety of terrains — stone steps, open rock faces, birch groves, narrow paths winding through forests of small evergreens, stunted by the exposure.  After our descent we followed a long, flat trail along a marsh, with green and orange grasses glowing against the deep blue water.  It was hard to imagine that the hike we’d missed could have been much better.

After our hard work on the hike, the girls were keen on another visit to the beach that they’d loved so much a couple of days ago — but alas, this too was a bit disappointing, with small waves, more seaweed, and even a jellyfish.  Still, you can’t beat the views.

We got back to our place in time for an evening stroll into town for beers at the local microbrewery (Bob and I) and an expedition for smoothies and salt-water taffy (girls).  Everyone will certainly sleep well tonight.

The girls stopped to say hello to us at the microbrewery on their way back from town. One of them is distracted by her phone — and it’s not even the one you’d think!

 

The rolling hills of coastal Maine

The latest calculations are that we put in more than 20 miles in today on our rented bikes, mostly over the national park’s gravel carriage roads.   We stuck to the trails described to us “more moderate,” and while we expected these to be flat and gentle, they turned out to be a fair bit less moderate than that.

Looks flat but is probably uphill

The carriage trails are lovely, wide, shaded trails, but owing to the nature of the terrain in this part of the world, they are not really flat.  Lovely, but rolling with hills.  On many of the hills some or all of us would have to dismount and walk our bikes up.

It was a hardship that seemed bearable when we  were driven by the promise of a large ice cream sundae inside an even larger popover at the Jordan Pond House, conveniently located at the farthest point in the Tri-Pond Loop we were executing today.

On the far side of Jordan Pond, we could practically taste the popovers.

This thought kept us pedaling along rather briskly for most of the morning up and down the undulations of the landscape, though at one point on a particularly long climb, we all got passed by a jogger.

Deflated troops after a bag lunch in a lovely setting

While we did see all three ponds gleaming magnificently in the sun, we didn’t actually ever get to latch onto any of those popover sundaes.  The darned line at the Jordan Pond House was just too long, and, probably due to coronavirus restrictions, it seemed not to be moving at all.  The hill-climbing jogger would have passed this line like it was standing still, because it was standing still.

Popovers, no; wild blueberries, yes

It was a difficult decision to make, but we ended up just eating our bagged lunch and refilling our water bottles several times at the Jordan Pond House before making our way through the rest of the loop.

Many a strategy board game loss was avenged on the adventure golf course, mateys.

One concession for the missed confection was to head almost directly to an adventure golf set up we saw yesterday on the way into town.  We headed back out there almost as soon as we returned our bikes to the rental place.

The line for golf was long, too, but at least it moved.  We opted to play the easier, original course and cruised right along once we got our clubs.  The going was much slower on the flashier new course.  Then we headed downtown to make up for lost ice cream and also to have dinner.

We even managed to break our beer fast at dinner with a sample flight of various Maine brews.

See, it all works out in the end.

Bangor to Bar Harbor

Well, we managed to go a whole day without drinking any beer.  Somehow.

We covered a lot of ground and saw a lot of brewpubs — it is Maine, after all — but we didn’t settle in for a pint, even to share.  Here’s what we did do:

On the Waterfront Trail in Bangor

Jen and I satisfied our suspicions that Bangor is a walking-friendly city by following two separate urban paths, the Kenduskeag Stream Trail and the Waterfront Trail, only to discover that a tiny sliver or our morning walk was also a tinier sliver of the East Coast Greenway.

And the East Coast Greenway

The Greenway connects 15 states. After this morning’s walk only 14 more to go!

As it turns out Bangor is more than friendly, It is a borderline fanatical stalker of walking.

To our benefit, of course. We are walkers.

Jen and I managed to do all that — and to not stop in for a pint at the Sea Dog Brewery on the waterfront — by 10 am, and we got everyone out of our downtown Bangor loft by 10:30.

This gave us plenty of time for adventure as  we explored more of Downeast.   We got to Mount Desert Island well before it was time to check into our new accommodations, so we sidled up to the Acadia National Park Visitors Center,  then  hit downtown Bar Harbor for some pizza.  And even then we still had time for adventuring before Air B’nB would be ready for us.

First we hit one of the crown jewels of the park, the vertiginous Beehive Trail, with its steep climbs aided by iron rungs, railings and bridges.  This was a little too much to bite off the last time we were here.  Lanie was six and much more likely to fall off than she is today.

The warning sign at the trailhead is bracing but   we all took to the trail like we had sticky spider powers.  Nadia was most of the way up before she realized how little she liked where she was.

Jen navigates an iron bridge.

The views from the top — actually there are views all throughout the trail if you look up from the iron rungs — took in the green of the trees, the grey of the rocks and the blue of the ocean, with dramatic waves of white fog closing in dramatically over the islands to the northeast and encroaching on Great Head and the Sand Beach.

 

By the time we made it down the back way, via the gentler Bubble Trail, we were hot enough to brave the Maine waves.  We joined a surprising lot of people in the frigid water for a late-afternoon cool down. Happily, the fog seemed to hold off from the beach and we enjoyed the warm sun as soon as we got out of the water.

Not a bad way to pass the time before our rooms were ready.

The evening was calmer.  We moved into  the second floor of a victorian close to downtown Bar Harbor.  The place is also a short walk to a supermarked where we provisioned with lunch items and even fixings for a dinner in.   Follwing that, some of us took advantage of the low  tide and walked across the sand bridge in the harbor to take in the sunset, along with a few score of our fellow tourists and a deer that apparently decided it didn’t want to be on Bar Island anymore.

On the sandbar

Still no beer, though we did pass an open brewpub on our way downtown for ice cream.  And while some of us stayed behind for the sandbar walk, everyone was in for the ice cream trek (though Jen eventually decided she’d rather get something from a bakery we passed).  I got homemade Maine blueberry softserve.

And off the island

College-bound

Though we have found Bangor, ME, to actually be quite a bit nicer than we expected, it’s not so action-packed a place that we felt the need to operate at our usual death-march vacation pace.  So, it was 10:45 before we rolled out of our rental apartment and headed north to Orono, to finally check out the place where Zoe will be living in about three short weeks.

Zoe and I had visited the campus once before — during a cold, rainy, muddy day in March just as everything was shutting down — and the rest of the family hadn’t seen it at all, so we were looking forward to visiting on a nice summer day.  The campus didn’t disappoint, although the ghost-town level of emptiness was a bit eerie.  We were able to locate (though not enter) Zoe’s dorm, nearest dining hall, and the locations of the limited number of in-person classes that she’ll have.  (At the moment, her schedule is over half remote, but luckily she does have at least some in-person classes.)  The one building we were allowed to go inside was the Center for the Arts, because the museum of Native American art and artifacts was open.

Skipping stones on the Stillwater

The campus runs along the Stillwater River, which provided a lovely peaceful spot for an afternoon walk.  The nearby downtown, though about the same size as Durham, managed to offer several dining choices — and most of them were NOT pizza!  We saw at least three brewpubs in Orono (and several more within walking distance of our apartment in Bangor).  We’re not sure why Durham seems unable to pull this off.

Ice cream break at the Family Dog

 

Fortified with a long day’s walking (as well as burgers, local beer, and ice cream), we had one last stop to make before returning to the apartment.  A short walk away from our downtown Bangor apartment is the famous home of Stephen King.  Just in the brief time we were there, on a random Tuesday afternoon, we saw several other groups coming to stroll down the historic street and peer through the iron gates at the King mansion.  In addition to the cool gates, the main attraction is a carved stump that is supposed to represent a lot of King’s books.

Our neighborhood has lots of nice options for dinner.  Tonight we chose a noodle shop that the kids had seen on our way in.  After stuffing ourselves with noodle bowls, we felt the need for a good long walk (or at least, most of us did — there was a small contingent that instead felt the need to lie on the couch and watch TV).  Our main observation was that Bangor has a lot of hills.  In a few places we thought we were back in San Francisco.

 

Is this a lovely European piazza? No, its Bangor, Maine!

 

Un-sequestration day #1

We are still trying to follow safe practices, and we have not actually been completely sequestering in our house for quite some time, but this is our first blog-worthy, whole family adventure since Nadia’s big birthday trip. We’re in another state, even.

Maine obligingly lifted quarantine orders for New Hampshirites several weeks ago.

Aside from escaping cabin fever, we are also are planning to acclimate ourselves to Zoe’s soon-to-be new home on the U Maine Orono campus.  Jen and Zoe are the only ones who have seen the campus; they squeezed in a visit mid-March just as the school was shutting down.

Before we could get there, we undertook some retail therapy, and maybe even below-retail therapy at the outlets in Freeport.  The LL Bean factory outlet, Old Navy, and the Nike store all benefitted from our visit.  We also managed to visit our first microbrewery of a trip that promises many more microbreweries.  Maine likes its craft brew.

This broke the drive up into nice, manageable chunks.  An hour-and-a-half to Freeport; a few hours of shopping; then an hour-and-a-half drive to our final destination of the day: Bangor.  Aiding the drive was  a very ineresting RadioLab episode about the long-term effects of the 1918 Pandemic.  Did you know that both Ghandi and Hitler got career boosts from the Spanish Flu?

Bangor turns out to be charming city combining aspects familiar to us from our stomping grounds of Dover and Portsmouth.  It’s a fair bit grittier than Portsmouth and a few notches hipper than Dover.

Texting whoopie pie menu and expecting a rapid response

Dinner on Bangor’s Market Square. The restaurant makes its own beer.

Bangor lumps both those places together, with an ample sprinkling of microbreweries — we’ve found four here without really trying — and a mix-in of whoopie pies.

Jen has found us a nice, central Air Bn’B apartment, and later she figured out how to text the whoopie pie bakery menu to the girls and collect their order.  (I opted for the “Down Easter,” which has molasses cake and blueberry cream filling.)  Jen’s a hero of this trip.

She was rewarded with a round of Terraforming Mars before road weariness took its toll on all of us.

Tomorrow we visit Orono.

Sequestration Day #46

Today’s pleasant surprise was the “We love our Seniors” sign delivered by the school district.  The less pleasant surprise was that we’re still running our woodstove on the last day of April.  At least we still have wood left to burn.

We got back into the swing of our Quarantine Game Tournament with a round of Carcasonne (it’s not important who came in second).

Daisy seems to have taken a walk.  Good stuff.

Sequestration Day #45

It should have been Spring Break week, but the schools have powered through in favor of an early June end date.  Our plans for break (Arizona — Zoe and Jen; also Arizona — Nadia; and Williamsburg for the rest of us) were not happening anyway.

In a moment of reflection on past travels, Zoe pulled out an Inca Cola from the big Peru service trip of two years ago.  Last year she and Jen were in China at this time.

Of course, there is only so much time one can spend reflecting on past trips when there’s cello to be practiced.

 

Sequestration Day #44

Room rennovation complete.  Next Lanie is setting her sights on cleaning out the basement.  We will have our hands full when Savers and the Swap Shop open up again.

AND, she and her sister Zoe made homemade pasta for dinner — much easier to do now that we have flour.