So after taking that little detour to Fort Edgecomb I continued driving to my actual destination – Snow Falls in West Paris Maine. The funny thing about waterfalls, hiking trails, covered bridges, and other fun roadside attractions is that they don’t have an actual address. I had no idea how hard this one was going to be to find but I figured a mechanic also named Snow Falls might be close by! So I typed that in and low and behold when I drove up my destination it was actually obvious for once. The falls were at a rest stop, a very bright and open rest stop. I drove in and found this place was awesome. They even had little camping grills out for anyone who wanted to enjoy them. Though I must say their amenities were a bit primative. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to use an outhouse!
Still, the trails that headed over to the falls were short, easy to walk, and provided far more beautiful a scene than I had expected. Apparently the falls were named after Captain Snow who had a camp set up just about where the picnic tables are. He was a fur trapper at the time living out in the wilds of Maine pretty far from any real white settlements. This may be why he ultimately died during a brutal Indian raid – easy pickins’ I suppose. The tale tells of an Indian chief leading the raid wearing an entire eagle over his head, it’s wings outstretched, and it’s beak agape. Quite an image! This happened sometime in the 1750’s or 60’s, as several historical accounts contradict each other.
It seems here in the States we like to forget our bloody history of territorial skirmishes but having visited the site of a fort (first built to keep people safe from Indians and then to fend off the British) and then coming here… well, it certainly colors your view of your country’s origins!
The Falls themselves were littered with the ruins of three mills which once spanned the property – a chair factory, a paper mill, and a wood pulp mill, which spanned from sometime before the 1850’s until 1900 or so. The first two mills burned down, the third probably just decayed, but their stone foundations are still there for everyone to see and they’re quite beautiful if you’re into that sort of Gothic decay.
(Scroll past the gallery to get to a bonus funny story – what happened after we drove away from the falls!)
None of us had been to West Paris so when we got hungry no one knew where to go. I typed in three separate restaurants into the GPS and found one was a farm stand with only fresh produce, another two were closed, and FINALLY after going past the damn waterfalls going back and forth three or four times we ended up back in town at the Market Square Family Restaurant. This proved a fateful decision.
We were all famished and ready to eat. I ordered the turkey casserole and my mother and her friend both got the scallops. The waitress was a happy woman but with the attention span of a gnat. I could dismiss this but when she put those scallops on the table we were all hit with the rank stench of bad fish. Neither my mother or her friend dared even try eating it and I told them not to because I was driving and didn’t need to be pulling over every three minutes because someone has food poisoning. My turkey casserole wasn’t much better. It appeared to be a bag of stuffing cooked and topped off with canned turkey, three pieces of broccoli, and a healthful crust of prepackaged French onions. Semi-homemade cooking alright! I was so hungry I didn’t care and ate it anyway…
My mother was so put off she said no to the offer of a different meal. June reordered a hamburger figuring that was something they couldn’t fuck up. Well! That was where she was wrong. A tiny shriveled hamburger came out looking like it’d been hacked off a mummy, with the same anemic gray coloration and wrinkles. The bun didn’t seem any more fresh… June stuffed it in her purse so she could leave without making it look like she neglected to eat two meals…Â She noted all the cars in the parking lot were from out of state.
We literally had to drive to McDonalds down the road to get something that was at least not rancid to eat. So I pulled up into the drive through and was about to order when my mother started screaming. Apparently some genius had put sprinklers out to water the three inches of lawn and aimed them directly into the windows of people driving up. She got absolutely drenched in ice cold water. Free shower!
I parked after ordering because I got myself an ice cream. As we sat there my mother found herself tickled beyond measure by an elderly Canadian couple parked in a very shiny convertible in front of us. They took about three hours to get in and get ready to drive off, taking out their hats and even an adorable little travel scarf I’ve never seen a man wear before in my life. His wife had a sun hat. In a convertible. The whole scene had my mother laughing so hard she nearly pissed herself and this went on for twenty minutes or so before he finally drove off, going the same pace as a slug. Maybe that sun hat would stay on after all…
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!
On my list of destinations I had several “castles” and estates that have been turned into public spaces for whatever reason. This was one of them and was situated at the end of a trail. There was supposed to be a trail head behind a local restaurant but there was also another entrance down a nearby dirt road – again a hard find. It was a set of steps aside the aforementioned road with a tiny cut off on the other side. Though it was poorly marked it was marked so we headed into the woods not really knowing what we’d find. Turns out hills. We found one steep hill after another that went deeper into the forest before dumping us out into a pasture and then at the top of the last hill a phenomenal view of everything below – a beautiful pastoral scene sprawled out ahead of us framed in the distance by the blue ridges of a mountain. A tractor plowed back and forth and a field of lilacs added additional color. I was already happy and we hadn’t even found the castle yet!
winding our way from the 
ample opportunity to photograph. I figured the abandoned Central Steam Power Plant in Fitchburg would be super cool… but this is really just me loving the sight of industrial decay. Hindsight it may have been a little hardcore for a first trip out…
seemed as good as an opportunity as any so with a little more coaxing I hopped out with my fancy new used camera and set about steam-punking it up.
and cows. Wow, had a blast there! And came home smelling of cow, but that’s quite another story! It was an hour and forty-five minutes to get there and NH being what it is, very little of that was proper highway. This was my second time up in this direction in the past month and I had passed by a couple things I wanted to check out.
hour in direct sunlight with a bunch of cows only to shove myself back into my car which doesn’t have a working air conditioner… or transmission for that matter. I tell you, you drive a lot more carefully when you’re afraid your tranny is about to flop out on the highway! I’ve been told it’s a matter of time. SIGH. Poor Daisy. Anyway, the bridge wasn’t that spectacular but the water was wonderful! I washed my hands of all the cow dirt and grease and splashed about for a few minutes to cool down. Been doing this a lot lately. It almost feel baptismal – a completely refreshing thing to do for both body and soul.
almost two hours away from home, with no ride back should this happen until 9PM, I decided to play it safe. I drove the normal route back home but I did make a couple stops. The first was a very short detour to see the Hopkinton Dam which was… not much to see. The second was far better, it was the McCabe Forest. I had seen a sign aside the road and figured I would check it out. The beginning of the trail starts in the parking lot of an abandoned auto mechanic garage. Though I had passed by at least four times I hadn’t noticed any cars. Today was no different. I love places like these. You never know where you are going to end up or what you are going to find! So I locked Daisy up, pulled out my new used camera, and off I went into the forest with a big gulp.
play with the camera a bit. I wasn’t particularly successful – I really need to purchase a good macro lens for this sort of thing (and I’ll be absolutely honest, a macro lens would be used on mushrooms and bugs far quicker than flowers!) Eventually I tired of this and walked on. The path was poorly marked in the sense it was marked but seemed to diverge with no markings pretty frequently. I didn’t really know where I was going but as usual I took a snap at every intersection as a record of where I had come from – photographic bread crumbs should I need them.
And then I ended up near a very colorful sandy bottomed river. It was still in the 80’s and I was sweating bullets even though it was cooler under the trees. Another river seemed a godsend but this one couldn’t be reached unless I wanted to just jump in. It was a tempting thought. No one was here… I could totally skinny dip and hope for the best…. but alas I was too chicken for that. I was however suffering from heat exhaustion as well as regular exhaustion from two weeks of insomnia. After taking all sorts of photos with the new camera and old I lay down on some soft moss, listened to the soft gurgling of the water going by, and stared up into the canopy above. I felt like I could have melted into the ground right then and there and been completely happy having just become part of the forest. I may have even nodded off for a bit. When I got back up I didn’t realize how much I had needed that little break! WHEW! Starting to feel better already!
path so I continued on only to run into a sign that pointed the directions I was coming from. It read, “entrance.” Hmmm… I heeded it’s advice and went back the way I came, found Daisy still sitting there melting in the parking lot, and hopped in. It was a long hot ride and by the time I got home I was absolute toast! I fell asleep and three hours later woke up to the worst migraine I had ever had in my life. The dizziness and nausea were so intense I literally couldn’t move and my whole body felt like I had the worst flu ever. I did have the phone next to me though and literally called for help… For my efforts I received an ice pack, a swig of Sudafed (as this seemed to have started with my sinuses) and a small bowl of macaroni which took me four attempts to eat. Even with all that the day was completely worth it and when I woke up the next morning without the migraine I counted my blessings fiercely and felt once again at total peace.
Yesterday I got the wonderful opportunity to go to a farm in Northfield MA and take a bunch of adorable photos of cows, goats, and Vizlas. It was an amazing experience. Totally worth the sunburn! Afterwards I decided I was in the area anyway, might as well drive around…
aside the road. No one was around for miles so I decided what the hell, let’s take a few black and white snaps and maybe poke around a bit. It was a shed, an ordinary shed, filled with ordinary crap you’d normally find in a shed but clearly abandoned for many many years and bizarrely not near any house anywhere. I was slightly concerned I might find a hobo in there but I didn’t, instead I stumbled upon something that made my whole week – it was a river just behind the shed. I decided to explore. I knew this was probably someone’s property but they’d never know and I wouldn’t go far…
Rochester MA. It was well worth the two hour drive! And I was already glowing when I got back into the car and decided to go on another adventure. I had driven by Fall Rivers to get here so I decided on my way back I’d swing by and see if I could get a photo of the Lizzie Borden house. I’ve been by it before (though I couldn’t tell you why) and I figured it was possibly interesting enough to merit a blog entry so off I went… but while I was still driving through Rochester I saw a tiny sign aside the road and a three car parking lot promising there was a trail nearby so I stopped on a little detour…
Massachusetts. Upon getting out of my car all I could see was a field. Where was the path?? I might not have figured this out if it weren’t for a guy coming up it, across the field, with his adorable boxer puppy. After the usual greetings of, “Hey! Another living soul knows about this place!” I was on my way. It’d been a long time since I had trekked across a grown field. This is a fun activity if you’re a kid but slightly terrifying if you’re an adult as it’s very disorienting and probably absolutely infested with ticks. Still, this path was worn enough I knew I wasn’t going to get lost in the proverbial cornfields.
enchanted forest was a row of rustic benches overlooking what I think was the entrance to Avalon. It was a sandy-bottomed river, very odd in New England, that had ice tea colored water that got darker as it got deeper until all you could see was the dancing reflections of trees on pitch black water. Immediately I hopped down the shore and splashed about like a small child. It was over eighty degrees out and my hands were greasy from petting a stallion a few minutes before. This little wash-up was perfect!  And it was QUIET out here. Despite being very close to a busy roadway you couldn’t hear a single car going by or any people, just the occasional birdsong. This place was absolutely enchanting. I wanted to build a hobbit home on the other embankment and stay here forever. Since I couldn’t do that I instead took out some marbles and started snapping a few photos. I must have been playing out there for quite some time before I decided to make my way back – something I managed to do by remembering various rocks and trees. I also found an adorable mushroom along the way! By the time I got back to the car I felt refreshed enough for the two and a half hours of driving ahead of me (and no.. I never did manage to take a photo of the Lizzie Borden house although I did drive by. Traffic today was utterly insane!)
