Since I have been up in Maine I have noticed the fall foliage I am hunting seems to be showing up in random patches, usually the most gorgeous of which are alongside the road where there’s no turn off and everyone is going seventy miles an hour… so frustrating. So today I thought the mountains might have both a gorgeous view and those drop dead gorgeous trees I have been aching to find. I heard rumors there was a castle atop Mount Battie, all the better for this month’s celebrations – maybe it’s not haunted but a castle is still cool and one atop Mount Battie seemed all the more appropriate.
I drove quite a ways to check out this destination. Unlike many of the other spots I have gone to this place was popular, still popular, even now in the autumn. There was even an old man at the toll gate taking fees! It was $6.
There were hiking trails for those of us who wanted to hike their way to the top. I would have loved that had it been a different day but my body was already wearing under the strain of yesterday’s overly ambitious travels. Plus I had a bunch of other places I wanted to go today so I did the chicken shit thing – I took the auto road. It was surprisingly short! It took of all of a minute or two to get to the summit. There were school buses and children everywhere. This was apparently the place to take your kid on a field trip. There were just throngs of them scrabbling around like ship rats, most eating their lunches on the rocks at the summit. There was a “castle” here… a sweet little castle-like tower standing alone with a plaque reading, “To all those brave men and women who fought in the world war.” How sweet whoever built it thought there’d only be one! You could climb to the top and get a pretty spectacular view, though still very very green. SIGH. It was really bright today though and my camera wasn’t keen on that. I wasn’t the only one having difficulty. I snapped a photo for a sweet older couple at the top. Not sure if they were a couple or friends or just met… was having a hard time figuring that out… but if they were a couple they were older, in Maine, and interracial. That could explain the hesitance. Perhaps even in these seemingly more liberal coastal towns such things are highly looked down upon. Shame. We should all embrace happiness whenever we can achieve it and be happy for others when they have found theirs.
After the tower I wandered off and took a few photos where I could before shuffling back to the car and heading onwards. I had my sights on Acadia and hour away (which funny enough has a view of Mount Battie in the distance!) but I wouldn’t make it there…
If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!
Fort Popham is just a half a mile up the road from 
My Haunted New England Tour this month could do with a few more ruins and I do love a good fort. When I drove up the sun was starting the set and the place was besieged by other photographers. They all had fine equipment and severe introversion. This was the first time I found myself flung into a whole group of other photo hounds. I found the experience fascinating. Everyone was polite and weary of each other. The only conversation I could hear was something to the effect of, “Let me know if I am in your way!” “Likewise!” Also people don’t know how to respond when you say likewise or ditto. Lessons learned. Ah well, if they wanted to be left alone I was happy to do so. I wasn’t looking for coffee or conversation anyway.
The fort was bigger than I remembered and had gorgeous stone archways. You could crawl around almost the whole perimeter and see how grandly it was perched there on the rocks overlooking the ocean. I was struck by its majesty. And the beach next to it had some very interesting piles of driftwood. More whimsy photos! But I think the best part of all of this was when I stopped a few hundred feet up the road and found an old battery (?) which I could walk into. When I came out I decided I really should visit the out house before going home so I walked the beach back up towards the fort. That’s when I noticed the moon had come out early and was huge and looming in the sky as if it was just waiting to be plucked like a flower. It had caught the attention of a number of the other photographers and I revealed in this new opportunity. I love the moon but I’ve never taken serious photos of it, especially not wistfully floating above a drop dead gorgeous bay and a tiny New England town. It was a perfect end to a perfect day.
I had such a wonderful afternoon scrambling on the rocky coastline at 
I arrived just as the sun was starting it’s weary retreat but when I was still bright enough and warm enough to really enjoy a cool sea breeze. Having reached the beach at low tide there were shells aplenty to find buried in the sand and plenty of wide open spaces to walk as the sea retreated ever farther. And since it was off-season this place wasn’t packed with people sunbathing like beached sardines. Instead a few pedestrians ambled lazily from one place to another and five people on horseback enjoyed the tepid waves slipping to shore. Two horses caught my attention for their behavior. A white horse clearly loved the waves and kept running directly into them, getting as deep as his flanks before his rider kept dragging him begrudgingly out. His friend, a young black horse, trailed behind him acting like the water was perhaps made of lava. He kicked and fumbled and tried to avoid it at all costs. When the water finally swooshed by his hooves he revolted with high kicks and terrible grimaces. I could tell he though the white horse has lost his mind.
Once the horses rode off I was left with some sea gulls. I took a few really sweet snaps of them scoring dinner – a crab they had beaten the tar out of. However when they realized what I was up to they beat a huffy retreat leaving the emptied out crab shell and showing me nothing but their glorious feathery butt as they waddled into the ocean and got smaller and smaller. Such is the fickle nature of a sea gull but hey! At least they were foraging for nature food and not dive bombing tourists for French fries and doritos. So there is that.
Popham is quite large at low tide and I took quite a walk in the dusk light. Someone had taken driftwood and built fun little structures. I thought they made the perfect subject matter for some whimsical tinted shots. I didn’t really want to leave but it was getting dark and I wanted to go a half mile up the road where Fort Popham was still waiting for me.
I am feeling full of myself again. My energy is nearly back and I was delighted to go out today and spend the greatest time scampering along the Maine coastline. In honor of this month’s theme Haunted New England I decided to go in search of a castle ruin. I had found one article online boasting, “Take a hike and see a castle in Maine!” Sounded pleasant, though there were no photos or any real description just the cryptic remark that I could find it in Fort Williams Park. Okaaaay… I knew it was on the coast somewhere and figured it’d be in some quiet out of the way place, perhaps a nice nature trail through the woods to some burned out ruin like 
The park was busy! Wow! And the weather? Freakishly warm. I was wearing a T-shirt while staring at the frigid Maine seashore and I was sweating balls. My calendar says October but mother nature apparently thinks it’s June. I can go with that. I passed by some sort of abandoned building driving in and wondered if that was the castle or part of it. There were so many people but where were they coming from and where were they going? I couldn’t tell so I just started to walk, pretending I knew. I ended up at a beach, a really lovely little beach surrounded on all sides by rocky outcroppings and the remains of an old fort. Beyond the harbor there were two lighthouses. Bonus for me.
The first thing that really caught my curiosity was a decrepit ruin jutting from the rocks and looking very uninviting. Could I scramble over the rocks and get to it? Was I allowed? I decided to try it, all the meanwhile expecting someone to start hollering at me but alas no, this is Maine, where Darwinian population control is encouraged. It turns out it was the remains of an old mine, bolted shut with a metal door. Damn. There’d be no retrieving Lassie’s bones today.
After that I decided to see where some of the actual paths attached to the beach went. I was delighted to find myself outside an old battery. It looked rather castle-like but it was still obviously a fort. However not far away I could see something that looked far more castle like. Third time’s a charm. But first I wanted to go harass some funny looking sea birds so I scrabbled over some more pointy rocks to take a few snaps of them doing their birdy thing. I looked around me and on this jagged seaside cliff there were a few precarious benches. Yep, I’m in Maine.
I came upon the castle from the back and through the little snippet of woods. It made a coy entrance into my life using the trees like a shy bride uses a veil. OK so maybe it was just a burned out stone mansion and not a castle but still I couldn’t help but adore it. Today was awesome. People were awesome. I got asked if I had been here before by an old man. Nope! We sat and chatted for a good fifteen minutes. Poor dear lives in Los Vegas. Pity that. Had a lot of people smile, laugh, and compliment the hair. Apparently orange hair makes me more approachable? Well that’s a relief. Scientific studies seem to think wearing orange makes people more hostile towards you…
I stuck my tongue out at the drone and snapped it’s photo instead. GOTCHYA you buzzing little spy bastard! (Yes, I know, wedding photography, public place, it had a right to be there but still. Drones. UGH.)
I needed to escape the Love Canal house for my own health so I started to plan a trip to Maine. Two days later than planned my stomach pains finally let up enough for me to make a midnight trek and I landed softly and quietly in the wee morning hours after spending four hours cranking up the classic rock and caterwauling at the top of my lungs. I don’t know why people seem to despise driving long distances alone so much. I find it… liberating.
I really wanted to make the most of this week. I have a bunch of stops all planned out but today? Up, still got that alcohol-free hangover, and once again didn’t make it out by noon. No matter. I was on my way! I had decided after reading a series of glowing reviews to check out Rangeley Lake State Park, a two hour drive, in the hopes of catching some great foliage snaps. I planned on making September my Leaf Peeping month but the weather has been absolute whack this year and the trees are terribly confused. “Do I turn color now or…? Well I see a third of your leaves are colored buuut….” Lakes are great for foliage photos because if it’s a calm day you can get all those gorgeous colors reflected on the water.
There wasn’t much for foliage when I started out but heading into the mountains I was soon awash with bright reds, oranges, and a few yellows. Perfect. There was however quite a bit of road work, numerous flashing moose signs, and by the time I got to park I don’t think I had seen another car in twenty minutes. That always makes me a smidge hesitant. Lately I have had a lot of concerned citizens tell me I should be loaded up on mace, heavily armed, and walking a large dog wherever I go. Bears! Moose! Serial killers! Oh my! But I probably should take heed. Central Maine is the Bermuda Triangle of weird disappearances and murder mysteries. I always felt this was because, as comedian Bob Marley put it, “There’s four cops in Maine and they’re all busy following the one black guy that lives there.” Dark humor cuts deep. Also it’s rutting season which means there are horny roving bucks who can be quite dangerous… SIGH.
The drive to the park was drop dead gorgeous. Just imagine being surrounded on all sides by coral colored trees fluttering in the breeze as your car zooms at light speed through them. (The speed of light is the general consensus of locals on how fast cars should go on their roads… Speed limit signs aren’t even symbolic anymore. They’re more like a snarky backhanded “joke” about your inadequacies.) The park was however… rather dull!
This place would be AWSOME if it happened to be in the dead of summer and I had a carload of children I wanted to dump in the woods somewhere so I could force them to socialize with other Lord of the Flies styled foundlings. This had everything for that – camp sites, picnic tables galore, well beaten paths with no parking directly adjoining the camping spots, a beach, two outhouses, even a drinking fountain! Granted by now it was filled with leaves and the beach and camp sites were so empty that all you could hear was an apocalyptic wind blow by. But I was here and going to make the best of it.
I parked my car at the boat launching dock, as one does in a Prius to confuse people, and hopped out of the car with my camera. A middle aged guy on a motorcycle drove up, claimed one of the docking ports, and spent an awfully lot of time avoiding eye contact with me as I strode by. HI. I’m Typhani. I have bright orange hair, a purple plaid shirt, and sometimes I bite. Usually only on Fridays though so don’t worry. So went the imaginary conversation in my head.
I took a few photos of the mountains beyond the boat docks before heading into the woods where I found a trail leading to the beach. Goodie! This was a well worn path. So many tiny traipsing feet had gone by here that the path was more of a gaping maw in the ground where tree roots clung to a tenuous existence above ground.
It’s the first day of October which means my favorite holiday of the year is coming up – Halloween. In celebration of this I have decided to make this month’s travels themed. So welcome to the first entry of my Haunted New England Tour! I will try my best to go to locations that are haunted, creepy, abandoned, surrounded by local myths and legends, stalked by cryptozoological beasts, or part of our brutal history. Of course there will be a number of cemeteries and this month could be a great way to get all you history and psychology buffs involved as New England is the site of many murders and mysteries! I shouldn’t have any problem finding new places to go!
I am starting out with a familiar stomping ground for me – the graveyard behind the town common in Ashby. If you’re wondering what the difference between a graveyard and a cemetery is I am told cemeteries exist on their own while graveyards are consecrated ground adjoining a church. It took me way too long to figure out what this particular graveyard was called. I had to stare at Google street view for quite a while! But the Church is the First Parish Church (Unitarian Universalists) and the graveyard behind it is called 
But anyway this cemetery is mostly slate stones which are the older stones you can find here, mostly dating to the 1700’s. These stones were particularly beautiful as they clearly had several different artists, all adding their own unique signature styles to familiar symbology. This was the first time I found a triple-headed stone. There’s usually one or two double-headed stones here and there, most often married couples or more grimly the gravesites of slaves, infants, or peasants (as double stones are cheaper than two separate stones…) From what I could guess these appeared to be siblings, all children, all dying in the third year of their life. Another sad find was a double stone for a twenty three year old woman in the late 1700’s who died four days after giving birth and one day after her infant died. Was this due to complications, disease, or a broken heart? We may never know but there did seem an inordinate amount of children here, even considering the time period.
Because of its age this graveyard is littered with Revolutionary War soldiers. I have become accustomed to seeing their stones, usually easy to spot because of their metal war plaques and the small American flags that are placed at each. During my first visit here I noticed a very lonely little stone at the very back left corner. It was just a square marble post, looking more like a property marker than a gravestone. It was showered in pennies. In New England this is an old tradition that denotes respect for an important historical figure. Who could it be? I wandered closer and read the stone, “PRINCE ESTABROOK NEGRO GREATON’S CO. 3 MASS REGT REV. WAR.” I must admit this confused me greatly. Was Negro his last name or was he black? And if he was black… we had black revolutionary war soldiers?! I didn’t have a penny to leave that first time I visited but I did today and it seemed to mean a little more because I knew who it was now after looking his story up.
Prince Estabrook was indeed a black man and also a slave. On April 19, 1775, after requesting and being granted legal permission from his owner, he became the first black man to become a revolutionary war soldier (yes, I said first, not only.) He fought and was wounded in the battle of Lexington and Concord, the first battle of the Revolutionary War. His service was on and off from there until the end of the war. We know shockingly little other than that. We have no idea why he volunteered to fight for a country which was enslaving him, we have pretty much no details of his personal life, only that after he eventually won his freedom he lived in Ashby Massachusetts with the son of his previous owner, dying at around ninety years of age. He does not appear to have been honored in any special way during his life and on his death he was buried outside the graveyard’s official boundaries, forever segregated. This explains why his stone was so… isolated. It was moved at some point in recent history to at least be within the graveyard’s official grounds. Only in 2008 did he get recognition being mentioned on a memorial facing the Lexington Green where he fought.
Today’s my birthday. It’s also the first day in weeks I have been well enough to leave the house for an excursion longer than grocery shopping. Being cooped up, and feeling myself age like a fine wine, I was desperate for some fresh air. Sadly it was raining… apparently everywhere. I wanted to go to the White Mountains, raining, hike up one of the local mountains, raining, go to Vermont for some foliage photos, raining. I wasn’t going to take no for an answer though, I NEEDED TO GET OUT. 
That’s how I ended up in Mason NH. I had this gut feeling that I’d just know when to turn off. And wow. Despite spending some of my childhood in Mason I know remarkably little about it. There are winding dirt roads everywhere with just stunning views of forest and trees, hills, pastures, farms, huge farm houses, tiny cabins, just such a wonderful diversity! Yep… this was working. This was feeding something in my soul that was starving. It fit in nicely with the music I have taken up listening to once again – a poignant and heady mix of 60’s folk and classic rock. I’m thirty-two years old today and I feel like I can almost see time passing me by. I don’t have a career, a home of my own, a relationship, or children, I blow effortlessly in the breeze like a leaf gliding to the earth. Perhaps that is why I had the ethereal tune of Can’t Find my Way Home whispering through my mind all day. “Well, I’m near the end and I just ain’t got the time
I had looped around a great deal of dirt roads and kept coming back to the 143 so I drove that for a little while until I spotted a big green sign aside the road denoting a historical landmark. As it turns out I had driven to Uncle Sam’s childhood home. I didn’t even know he had any connections to New England. I parked aside the road, took a photo of the sign and the house which was obviously owned by someone who I was hoping wasn’t home and watching, and then meandered only about 50 or 100 feet down the road where I noticed a trail head. Yup, this is where I was supposed to be. I could feel it.
It was cold. And wet. And cloudy. My camera wasn’t happy with any of these conditions but I told it to buck up, we’re doing this thing. It actually turned out to be a sweet little trail! The rain made it all the more magical to me, the damp seemed to add a sense of whimsy. Moss covered rocks lined the path to either side, a few stone walls were scattered throughout likely marking property boundaries from a few hundred years ago, and since it was such a wet day there were salamanders everywhere. They were the bright orange kind you see so frequently here if you’re the kind of person who looks under damp logs which I am.
The salamanders weren’t the only critters out today. I also go to see a number of chipmunks. For being so common they sure are hard to photograph! I feel the aggravation of wildlife photographers as I set my eyes on these tiny fuzzy beasts. They chipped and alerted me to a spot a little off the path which had clearly been used as some dumping ground for spare metal and glass at some point. Pieces of cars and machinery I couldn’t identify scattered the ground next to a rusted out metal wash basin filled with broken glass bottles from God knows when. I inched up to it slowly, hoping it wasn’t an active campsite of someone who was just deranged. Luckily it wasn’t and I took a moment to look at the rust and decay. I smiled knowing nature was taking care of this mess.
Towards the end of the trail was I super happy to find a huge cluster of mushrooms which I think were Hens of the Woods, edible. I am not that ballsy to try my hypothesis but I did enjoy finding them! They smelled delicious – which probably means I’ve misidentified them and can kill a small village with them. That tends to be how these things go… In any event I took a photo of this find next to my shoes to compare them for size.
Today was everything I wanted last Friday to be – absolutely amazing. And all I had to do was wander off while trying to go to the feed store for bunny food. I hardly ever just go out to do errands anymore. Somehow I always manage to find myself falling down the proverbial rabbit hole again.
This place was swank as far as trails go! It had a memorial rock right at the entrance as well as a mailbox full of maps and a guestbook. Whoever left this place must have been loaded – as most of Sharon is. And wow! It was breath taking!
I had thought I was alone you see… I mean who else would be here, there were no cars… and that’s when, bitching vocally to the camera, “Focus damn you!” three people came striding by to see my sorry butt in the air, my slacks sagging (from loss of weight and lack of belt) and my drawers hanging out, standing on all fours on the ground trying to get just the right shot of an adorable mushroom I found. Who knows what they think I was doing, either way everyone avoided eye contact. And not long after that a woman came by with her young son. It was all rather sweet.
The trail went on quite a ways and ended at a little bridge where it connected to another trail that went… .who the hell knows! Another trail off the main one was labeled, “woodland trail” and that one was a loop trail. I didn’t get to explore it but this preserve had a sign saying it was still open in winter for hiking. I suddenly need snowshoes. I thought I’d be cooped up for these cold dark months but maybe not. All the women in my life keep yelling at me – for getting lost, for having too much “bravery” to go charging into strange woods alone, for just generally being adventurous, but you know what? If I get eaten by bears then so be it. At least I died doing something I loved. And besides I have yet to see any bears but now that I said that there will probably be a plague of them on my next little jaunt.
Anyway, this place was soooo pretty and relaxing I would suggest it to anyone. Truly delightful. I am calm once again! Even more so my mind is sparked and enthusiastic. I dream of someday owning a property much like this, hopefully with a river running through it, so I may also create a hiking trail for the public, winding through the woods, past fairy houses placed by local artists, and past my little educational farm and back again. I can see it so clearly and I know in my heart working towards this goal is what I am supposed to be doing with my life – giving back, being joyful, becoming the wild child I always knew I was. Anyway, if that is something you would like to know more about feel free to check out my future farm’s page where I work towards this goal, philosophize, and sell my art: 
Most days when I set out on an adventure I end up in Narnia, somewhere hidden and unexpected, somewhere full of whimsy and joy. I was expecting nothing short of this on Friday when I found myself once again crawling out of my own skin to get out. It’d been a week of bad insomnia and health issues so I didn’t get out until way later than I should have but I still had great hopes when I set off. I was going to go to Vermont, for what reason I wasn’t sure, and coming home from Vermont I was going to stop at a fabric store or two so I could purchase some cloth with which to start designing my own clothes. Little was I to know that day’s adventure would be more of a misadventure.
Somehow I came across Gifford Woods State Park as a destination. Another blogger had been around Kent Pond and took some lovely snaps when there was still snow on the ground. I figured this was a good starting place so ignoring the faintest pain behind my eye, a sure sign of a migraine to come, I hopped in the car, programmed the GPS, and set out on the two hour drive.
As usual the drive was gorgeous. I ended up winding down all sorts of country roads, through the mountains which where all starting to become flush with red, orange, and yellow. It made my heart beat just a little faster. I passed many places I wanted to check out but I knew I had to get to the trails soon because it gets dark in the woods several hours before it gets dark everywhere else and I was already trying to beat the clock.
I started entering the Killington area to find this was a community that seemed to be based on skiing. The mountains were striped with deforestation, the result of creating many ski paths down them, and the little businesses all seemed swanky and cute. I even passed a place called Cyco Bikes. Vermont has always been super fond of punderful business names.
I think the answer was no but I was soon inundated with about eighty different things at once. This super friendly woman handed me not one but two maps and proceeded to point out about fifty different trails and why each was great as well as directions to them because none of the ones she was pointing out attached to the parking lot (I think that was the one trail she didn’t mention!) Some had old hardwood trees which I am sure are nice but if I remember right most of the trees that turn color are soft wood. Some had waterfalls. Some were a three hour hike and attached to other trails, some were fifteen minutes. Eventually she got to the pond. I asked politely about that one. Again she gave me two different answers. I could go out of the parking lot, take a left, and take it from there for a two to three hour trail or I could go some other farther away destination down several roads and have a fifteen minute hike and some waterfalls. I did the first as her second set of directions completely baffled me.
I found a spot near where I parked the car that looked like it could be a trail, be it a horribly overgrown one. So I entered and found myself about five inches deep in mud. Whatever this was had all sorts of shoe prints going in two directions at a tiny fork. I went towards the lake and slogged through the muck about twenty feet before the foot prints dried up and I was hit with even deeper mud and a wall of forest. I tried the other side and came across the same issue. I left. Maybe it was on the other side of this little beach? There did seem to be some sort of path through the reeds behind the bulletin board… I was able to walk maybe thirty feet on that “path” where I could see a beaver lodge but unless I wanted to swim the rest of the way around the lake there was no way around that. Clearly based on the footprints I wasn’t the only one having this problem.
Annoyed I left. I figured I could find a trail, any trail, and find something good on it, so back to the car I went. The problem is I am still driving the borrowed Prius and this was not the area to be driving a Prius. It was a fifty mile an hour road where all the locals were going seventy and they were pissed if you wanted to stop at one of these trail heads or slow down in any way. I didn’t even have a chance because upon leaving the parking lot I was greeted with a steep hill and the Prius refused to pick up speed. I got to fourty, maybe forty five, and a pick up behind me was up my tail pipe from out of nowhere. He was driving so fast and aggressively I thought I’d be nice, pull over, and let him pass. That didn’t make him happy either as he blared his horn as he whooshed by. I don’t know what he expected me to do… I can only press the gas pedal so far. If the car refuses to go the car refuses to go and we are on a fucking mountain after all. This happened a couple times until I finally found another trailhead, the Sherbourne Trail. This time there was a huge sign aside the road and a very obvious parking lot. Granted I could not find this particular path on the map.
I got out. There were numerous people, all accompanied by mountain bikes. One look at the path and I knew that’s what it was for, not for hikers, even though it wasn’t marked as such with any signage. Fuck it. It was a little over a mile long, claiming to be a “mountain pass.” I thought why not, mountain passes have summits, and that would be perfect for some foliage photos. Up I went zigzagging and stepping aside whenever I heard a bike coming up behind me. The cyclists were all super sweet and some were even laughing, all of them thanked me for stepping aside.
There wasn’t much to see here… a number of mossy rocks but not much else. A few times I came across a smell that was wonderful and sweet and brought me right back to my childhood but I couldn’t tell you what it was. Since the trail zigzagged and branched a few times I was trying to keep focused on the orange trail markers…. but I think whoever was putting them up was colorblind because they’d inadvertently turn pink from time to time for no reason. Usually when this happens it means two trails are converging. I saw no evidence of this.
I ended up where there was some sort of construction. Two twenty something year old men were putting down a bridge. I hadn’t passed that before… did I? How the hell did I get here? And more importantly did I have the courage to fess up and admit I was lost? Not at first. I passed them, knowing immediately that was the wrong decision when my poor little converses sank in the mud. I hadn’t passed mud…. this was the wrong way… but I still had my pride. I walked a little ways but this time the sound of cars was so distant I could barely hear them at all. My back up plan was to find a road and hitchhike back to the car if, God forbid, I ended up truly and utterly lost. I headed back, sheepishly, and asked where the fuck I was. I had a nice little chat with these two very friendly guys, and one of them said, “Go out to the intersection and take a left. Keep taking lefts. You’ll end up back at the parking lot.” Thank God I knew which trail head I had come or they wouldn’t have known where to send me either. They sheepishly admitted this trail was brand new and as of yet poorly marked. I didn’t even see the intersection coming up… but I saw it going back and kept going, and going, and going, until as promised, about a mile and a half away, sat the Prius, also looking sheepish, it somehow found itself cuddled up to another Prius (with a bike rack??) and a horse trailer. The horse trailer made me laugh. Clearly someone else didn’t know this was a bike path so I’m not that numb after all.
By now I was overheated, dehydrated, exhausted, and my migraine was starting to kick in full force. That’s never a good thing when you’ve got nausea and have to navigate down curving mountain roads and psychotic 180 degree loop-de-loop styled New England exits. By now it was five in the evening. I’d been on that trail for more than two hours. There’d be no extra foliage shots on the way home for me and I wouldn’t be stopping at any fabric stores either with my head pounding like this. About fifty minutes from home I started getting super sick and started to look for places to pull off the road and take a nap but by then all the picnic areas and rest stops seemed to have disappeared. As I entered Keene, thirty five minutes from home, I debated stopping in the city somewhere but by then it was only thirty five minutes. I could handle it, couldn’t I? Driving by was a decision I soon regretted as I stared at the clock every five minutes, watching it tick down, desperately wanting to be home. By the time I pulled in the driveway it took all my strength not to open the car door and just barf all over the ground. I was crazy dizzy as I tottled back to the house and collapsed immediately into bed. Better luck next time? I sure hope so!
