So after spending a nice bit of time at Sarah’s Hat Boxes I took my mother out on part two of today’s adventure: Willard Pond. It wasn’t that far away and was super easy to get to. I’d heard about Willard Pond many times but hadn’t made it out there. I was told it was however beautiful – it’s a small protected lake in Antrim NH which has no houses on its shores and does not allow motors of any kind on the trails or in the water, basically a preserve.
The entrance to the lake is located at the end of a long dirt road that drags you pretty far out into the middle of the woods before it just ends at a dirt parking lot. It was here that I found a portapotty which I thought was a bit odd until I realized it appeared to be a popular swimming hole or if I am being more accurate a series of swimming holes which would explain the squealing delighted child running towards the parking lot – towel flapping in the wind until he lost it, a gaggle of women all giggling over the little scene, a series of other small children taking no notice.
We passed two trail heads before reaching the lake itself and yes, it was beautiful. Today was a gorgeous day out, not too hot, not too humid, and there was a most refreshing breeze coming off the blue-blue water. I took a couple snaps of the swimming hole before deciding to check out the trail to the right which I figured must go around the whole pond. It went up a small hill where a nice rock outcropping was before leading us through a wild blueberry patch and to small dam. There was no bridge across but the two people ahead of us just walked right over it, splashing in an inch of water. I figured I’d try going across with my shoes on. That probably wasn’t the wisest idea… As the trail went on we discovered a series of smaller more private swimming holes, many of them occupied by small groups of people. As we hiked deeper into the woods the trail got increasingly hairy. Personally, if I were alone, I would have kept trucking right through it until I couldn’t anymore. My mother on the other hand said something about not getting her somewhere where I couldn’t get her out. I sighed, she’s probably right, and so we headed back. I will likely be back to check out the two named trails between the parking lot and pond.
I took a long winding nonsensical route home and passed a bunch of other things that I am going to put on my list to check out later – everything from other quirky local businesses to hiking trails and farms. Mother wasn’t as keen on going 4 wheeling with the RAV as I was and twice yelled at me to not listen to the GPS and just stay on main roads. Her sense of adventure isn’t as deep as mine, clearly. I did however pull over to read a random historical marker in Stoddard – I guess the town used to be known for glass. Who knew!
This area was so sweet and rich in things to see and do that I know I will be back soon.
Today I was supposed to go out to lunch with a friend and meet a different friend at the Apple Pie Fair in Dummerston Vermont, however things didn’t go as planned. My lunch friend got sick and couldn’t go and my apple pie buddy ended up double booked. None-the-less I decided I needed to get out anyway so I asked my mom if she wanted a day out and off we went!
Yesterday I spent the day helping my mother sell soap at a local craft fair and it must have drained my energy more than I thought because today I could NOT get going! So it was 2:30 before we go there… The listing online said it ended at 4:20PM, which is obviously a joke for the herbally inclined… so I thought maybe it ended at 5? I was hoping anyway. I found parking in a field down the street. There was no charge. We walked past a big house that was taking the opportunity to host a multi-family yard sale since so many pedestrians were walking by… The people there were super sweet and talkative! We moseyed on towards the church. SO MANY PIES – sold whole in front of the church or by slice down aside the church. There was also apple cider and apple cider doughnuts. I grabbed a doughnut to snack on as I walked. Apple cider doughnuts are the best doughnuts you can get, absolutely delicious, and perfect to nibble on as you walk across the street to a craft fair in another church. Sadly we got there just as everyone was packing up. Guess it ended at 3. SO MANY ADORABLE VERMONT CRAFTY THINGS! Wish I got there sooner! There was the usual knitting, crochet, quilting, home-made ties, and then just an assortment of odd things… like these adorable troll like creature sculpted by a pair who call themselves The Widow and the Spinster (nancyb63@svcable.net and bunny@svcable.net). If I’m honest I probably would have taken one home if I had anywhere to put it. My life isn’t that… organized… yet. Across the way 
After being laid up for two days with a migraine I was just about crawling out of my skin this morning, desperate to go somewhere, anywhere. I’m still in central Maine with my mother and she’s still none too keen on going for a hike in 85 degree weather soooo I offered to bring her to a museum, which I figured had to be climate controlled. Usually I drive but since we were so close anyway, and she does need practice driving, I climbed into the passenger seat and off we went.
It was an uneventful drive until we were almost there. Then the GPS insisted we had to go down Rangeley Road to get there. Only problem was the road was closed due to construction. So I took the GPS down, zoomed out, and found an alternate route through the college campus. It was, after all, a museum on the college campus. And wow. I don’t want to sound critical but all I ever knew of Central Maine was poverty and a lack of education, so to stumble upon such a crazy expansive campus here, nestled in such a well kept little town…. well I was shocked. This was not the Maine I grew up with. I must have fallen through the Twilight Zone again.
The museum has a range of art and utilitarian items from the native peoples of both North and South America, everyone from the Inuits of Canada all the way down to the Mayan and Aztec Empires. It was actually quite impressive! Funerary dolls, textiles, baskets, and a series of interactive displays for children that my mother kept herself entertained with (as she forgot her reading glasses at home and couldn’t read any of the plaques anyway.) They even had a bunch of South American dress up clothing and a wee wigwam. OK, even I went inside that one… Because when else do you get to play a wigwam? All and all it was a lovely little trip and was happily surprised. If you’re in the area and into museums its well worth a look!
I wasn’t on it for long before I hit massive gridlock. There were cars sprawled out for miles and miles. A helicopter flew overhead and people started craning their necks out their windows to see my awesome doodle job on Daisy, which I had recently touched up an added to. She’s been in and out of the shop all winter and spring so this was my first outing with her in a long while. It was unfortunate as it was over 80 degrees that day, in full sun, and Daisy’s AC isn’t functional. I’d also left my water and phone charger in the Prius, having been accustomed to using that car in Daisy’s absence. As traffic ground to an absolute halt I found myself stuck, not for the twenty or so minutes I had expected, but for more than two hours. By this time I was suffering heat exhaustion. I was dizzy, nauseous, and soaked in my own sweat. To make matters worse I was bored because the CD player decided it was also overheated and stopped working along with the radio. I traveled only a little over a mile in those two hours and watched as everyone in a truck just drove over the grassy meridian and sped off in the other direction. My car is tough but too low to the ground for that. I was stuck until I finally made it to the Westford exit and was forced to take it, they had closed down the entire road ahead of me. So I drove into Westford, and the first thing I saw was a Panera’s, so I drove in and used their bathroom to cool down, taking a paper towel and soaking it in fresh cold water, splashing my face in their sink before returning to the counter and buying a smoothie and half a sandwich. I ate before stopping to consider where I was and what I should do. I didn’t want to find some ulterior way to the pet store, still being more than half an hour away, with the 495 still closed, but I was in the same area as a friend so I asked if I could drop by and maybe take a cold shower, when the answer was yes, I then decided I would make my trip out worth something by checking out a local trail I found on previous drives.
I ended up at the Tophet Chasm, travelling along their boundary trail, which was 3.3 miles. It was still well over eighty degrees but the shade of the trees was sufficient enough for me for quite a while. I had heard these woods were haunted and had some link to Native American religious rituals back in the day. I found the trail to be…. exceptionally ordinary. What they were calling a chasm just looked like an average wooded hill. There wasn’t anything particularly interesting on this trail, no weird plant life, no funny little birds, no amazing views. In fact the trail wound its way through the back borderlines of numerous private properties. Had I lived on one of them I might find this very neat, having traveled to hike, I found it… less than interesting. The only thing I found that amused me was a gargoyle placed near the trail by one such private residence that appeared to be waiting in ambush for hikers. Super cute!
By the second mile in I started to suffer heat exhaustion again and wanted nothing more than to be off it. I got super nauseous, dizzy, lethargic, and because the pollen count was so high (with the ground looking as if it had snowed yellow) I was getting some super pissed off sinuses starting to give me a headache on top of everything else. I trudged on. There was one view, at what I think was called Lookout Rock, near the end of the trail, that did in fact look over a good part of the town. It wasn’t amazing but ti was something! Onward I walked, melting… By the time I got back to the car I was sooo ready to be home. I drove to my friends house instead where my heat sickness escalated and I ended up pretty much downed for the next couple hours, trying to regain strength to drive home. Here I learned the traffic jam I found myself stuck in earlier had trapped some cars for up to four hours and was caused by a fire in the power lines. I’ve learned a lot of lessons from this. Always have water in the car. Don’t try to hike in the afternoon when the weather is in the 80’s. Check traffic reports.
About a week ago I was asked to do a group trip, which I am not adverse to, that would be somewhat local and appropriate to bring a four year old. So I thought the sculpture garden in Brookline might be the ticket. I had heard there were all sorts of large sculptures nestled in the woods on a series of hiking trails that ranged in severity, with most being “easy.” I had envisioned a college campus with a few winding trails around it.
Part of this group was my mother, whose alarm did not go off, and who spent $2 buying a muffin for breakfast that she first stepped on and then lost entirely. From here the GPS kept freezing and would not accept the address and we got lost from there. I was still pretty chill, just hanging in the back seat with the kiddo, which is something I very rarely do. Sadly the bickering had already started.
When we found the entrance to the sculpture garden it was a dirt road attached to the highway with the saddest little sign directing the way. The parking lot had a few gorgeous metal sculptures, some cars parked from other visitors, and a big old map. It said online I should print my own map so I did… not that it helped… because between the three of us no one could make sense of it. In fact the map I’d printed and the big one in the parking lot didn’t agree on much!
We started walking, ended up on what I think may have been a RV trail, climbing up, up, up and not seeing a damn thing. Everyone’s huffing and puffing and cranky. I’m at a complete loss as to what is going on. When we finally got to the top of the hill we found ourselves in a rat’s nest of insanely ill-marked trails that went off in all directions with colorful arrows pointing in every one of them. Most trails these days are color coded. These tried to be… but both the maps had different colors for the same trail and the trails themselves? Well! You’re walking on the purple, red, blue, green, yellow trail…. or is it white? No, I think it’s all of them. We’re on every trail at once. Absolute chaos. I felt like we might end up in Wonderland, or somewhere worse. Were Muppets changing the arrows every time we passed? Felt like it.
But then we started to see the sculptures. They were in fact littered everywhere and were for the most part marked on the map by color and number – not chronologically, or in any other order we could identify, and the colors seemed to mean absolutely nothing besides, but they were there! Look! Most of them were pretty abstract and not really my thing but a few were really cool like a big steam punk bank vault door just sitting in the woods all mysterious. I also adored two granite hugging couples, some Australian’s concept of a seed, a weird figure in a serpentine pose around a pole, and my favorite of all three beautifully whimsical werewolves made of scrap metal. And we did enjoy ourselves after the bickering settled down but seriously… this isn’t for everyone. If things like insanely poorly marked trails and unreadable maps bug you then perhaps you should make a pass on this. Even the “loop” trails were just big U’s that attached to other big U’s. Not a single complete loop. And the hiking was moderate – there were rocks and hills and slippery leaves. The four year old did great though so I still wouldn’t discount it completely as family fun…Â And hey, I did have a good time. Honestly. I think there’s something really cool about art in the woods, even more cool when you can go up to them and touch them, getting a real sense of the artist who made them.
Today was a gorgeous day for wandering! So I hopped in the car and started to drive randomly in a direction I decided upon earlier. I had no specific destination in mind and was just enjoying rambling down a bunch of rural country roads until I came across a trail head. It turned out being the Bic (or is it Big?) Dickerman Hollis Town Forest. There was enough parking for two cars and luckily I was the only one there so I cuddled up the Prius next to some trees (as Daisy is still in the shop) and off I went!
This trail looks like an old access road and probably was at some point. Now it’s a “multi-purpose” trail that forbids motorized vehicles but seems to be a lovely place to bring your dog or horse. The entire trail seems to be a slight incline which is nice for working up those muscles on your backside! I’m not complaining! I stopped here and there to take photos of the lady slippers that were sprouting up everywhere. This of course further inspired me to take a few whimsy shots – of the crystal ball, a chalice, and of course a random petrified salt shaker I just happened to have on me (because who doesn’t bring a salt shaker into the woods with them?)
I wish I had a map of the area because this one trail seemed to be the trunk line that a ton of other less road-like trails branched off of. This seems to have been a hiker’s dream. Just so many options! But it was later in the day, I was alone, I decided not to be too brazen and stuck to it without wandering off. And when I got to the end of it I had to start laughing. Someone how I ended up creeping into the back of the 
On my way back I rescued a dehydrated tree frog that was smushed to the trail doing a fantastic impression of a dead leaf. I walked him back to water and released him in a stagnant little tributary. He should be good now.. And my good deeds for the day continued when driving home I stopped the car to escort an insanely fast little turtle across the road. He wasn’t joking around, he even hissed at me, which is really weird considering it was a painted turtle and not a snapper. They’re usually quite docile! All and all a great day blundering about!
Between my body not getting the hint it’s go time, and a bunch of issues at home, I have been severely pokey in getting this year’s traveling started, but today I took my first little road trip of the season, and it was goddamn amazing!
I had decided to go to the Flume Gorge in the spring, before the tourist rush and also when all the water from the melting snow is whooshing down the mountains. I asked my mother if she wanted to go and after a bit of convincing she relented. She was sick on Mother’s Day so this was what I had decided to do with her to make up for it. We were slow getting out, getting into the car around 1PM, and then requiring several stops. I typed in the address wrong and after two hours of driving realized I was still forty minutes away. Could we make it in time?? Yes we could! We got there around 4PM, after mother had smuggled a gas station sandwich into the car while I was filling my tank. It was an egg salad sandwich, which you’d think would be a gamble at a gas station… but it was bizarrely great and much needed.
Tickets to the Flume Gorge cost us $16 per adult, unlike most the trails I go on which are in the middle of nowhere and absolutely free. That’s OK, it was well worth it! I guess my mother had been there before, during peak tourist season, and she didn’t remember much of it. This time around, being the spring, we had almost the whole trail to ourselves and it was gorgeous! The water was lively as we walked over numerous bridges to see see different vantage points. There were a few signs along the trail highlighting various features. A good portion of the trail is on a trellis going over the water and in between two rock walls. It makes for a stunning viewpoint, a brisk amount of exercise, and the sound! I can’t tell you how amazing the sound was! As the water rushed by it echoed against the rocks and became louder and louder until you could almost hear nothing else. I felt so alive! And there were a few beautiful waterfalls, one of which sprayed us with a cool and refreshing mist.
I won’t lie, for a first outing this was a bit extreme. It was three hours of driving to get there and much of the trail was steep, either going up hill or up stairs. Still, being as empty as it was we both could take our time and we had a great day. This was one of the most scenic places I have been so far and well worth the visit! The only complaint I have is that my camera hates taking photos in direct sunlight so a good deal of my snaps came out washed out. I still have to learn how to muck with the lighting setting to avoid this in the future. But with that being said I had a fantastic belated Mother’s Day celebration with my #1 mom, who I took a number of adorable photos of but I am fairly certain she’d kill me if I posted them here.
