In Part Two of last week’s Maine adventure I learned about my family history. I was told my great grandmother had spent a great deal of time (more than three years) in a sanitorium where she was being quarantined as a tuberculosis patient. It was called the Central Maine Sanitorium. It was a trying time for the family that clearly had a negative impact but beyond that I knew very little about this particular event… until by happenstance I was talking to a random person on FaceBook who mentioned an abandoned sanitorium in Fairfield Maine. Could it be the very same?
I did some digging. There was an epidemic of tuberculosis in Maine that resulted in a great deal of people being thrown out into the streets because their family did not want to catch this disease. This resulted in several tent cities being formed, one of which was in Fairfield Maine. At some point the problem became too big for a mere tent city and the state stepped in and built two large facilities for tuberculosis patients. The one built in Hebron was called the Western Maine Sanitorium and this was where patients who were expected to recover went. The other one built over the tent city in Fairfield was called the Central Maine Sanitorium and patients that were sent here were of only the most severe cases, basically expected to die. I guess that explains why she was there for over three years and could not receive visitors in all that time.
Basically what had started as a vague curiosity during a random conversation with a stranger turned into something a little more meaningful. I had to go but urban exploration isn’t really what I specialize in… though I do love it, it can be dangerous, and so I felt better dragging someone along. And so this became the one most important destination that week as I dragged an equally curious hostage behind me.
Initially I had a hard time finding this place as I once again got the wrong address and wasn’t even on the right road but once that was amended it was an easy drive down a sleepy street. It didn’t look like anyone cared about this place anymore although someone had put a For Sale sign up. I do not know if it was for this property or the neighboring acres though…
In any event a small parking lot was still there and even though two buildings that were still on the site were boarded up someone had unceremoniously de-boarded them. The structure was in perfectly fine condition for poking. There wasn’t any rotting floorboards or anything like that.
We initially started in the first floor but it was all boarded up and so dark we couldn’t see a thing. Our cell phone flashlights barely penetrated the darkness. It was… unusually dark. However light came in through all the windows upstairs and the place seemed alive. Graffiti decorated almost all the walls. A few pieces of furniture and equipment remained along with a sign requesting to keep the door closed. An elevator languished in in a pit but otherwise the structure seemed pretty intact.
There’d been whispers this place was haunted but the only odd feeling I got was when I entered what I think was the nurses’ area. Here I felt dutiful, fulfilled, like whoever was still here was still doing good work for the people. It was interesting. I wouldn’t expect to get that feeling in what essentially was a hospice. Still, it was pleasant. I suspect most of the spirits here had long enough to come to terms with their own deaths before finding their way elsewhere. I must admit though that I was a little heartsick to find a room painted in pastels… was it a nursery? A nursey in a ward devoted to consumption? Surely, babies can not generally recover from such a thing.
I took a bunch of photos with my cell phone having forgotten my camera. It’d already been a long day before we arrived. In any event this place is a photographer’s dream – so many weird angles, lighting, and decay. Just watching the paint fleck off the wall was amazing. I could see whole photo shoots done here – maybe even little horror movies.
Certainly the local teens knew about this place. I was entertained by their graffiti which distressed my travel companion. He lamented it was frustrated with too many tags dissing each other by name and using pretty profane language. C bombs and N bombs danced with lesser slurs of slut, bitch, and whore, you know, the usual sprinkling of misogyny. I couldn’t help but laugh. That’s small town life for ya… when you live somewhere that everyone knows you the only thing of value you tend to have at that age is your reputation. That’s what makes it such a delicious target for others with a chip on their shoulder. That explains the need for such fiercely negative language. It has to be the worst, although these little delinquents miss the fact that two white teenagers slinging the N bomb at each other isn’t edgy, it’s utterly meaningless. As it should be!
The graffiti wasn’t all bad though. Some had some artistic merit or humor to it. There was a very Beetlejuice-like “exit” painted on a brick wall in one of the closets. A cute plague doctor did his rounds nearby. Another room amped up the horror by scrawling “grandma’s house” on the peeling wallpaper while a little ways away another piece of art cheerfully stated, “I am a cat!”
Outside I walked around the building a little bit and came to a second much smaller building that I thought at first was a garage for ambulances or something like that. However in walking in I came across a somewhat unnerving sight – a single chair sat overlooking the door, behind it was a large furnace and what appeared to be a cast iron crematorium with space for four cadavers. You’d think I would be a little creeped out by this, especially since by this time I found myself alone, but it was such a beautiful day and I didn’t feel anything lingering HOWEVER my camera seemed to disagree. This one photo I took came out with a mysterious fog over it for no reason whatsoever.
Onto the galleries! Because I took SO MANY PICTURES!
Up first are my Black and Whites…
A parade of graffiti in living color!!
And the rest of the structure:
I tried to be good today and plan where I was going – but the Fates had other ideas. I was going to go conquer an old foe – Mount Monadnock. I even picked a trail, the Dublin Trailhead, but try as I may to find an address I just couldn’t get anything more specific than “Old Troy Road.” So off I went! I found Old Troy Road just fine but the farther I ambled down it the more signs popped up reading, “Private Way!” In previous travels I learned this usually means somewhere at the end is a pissed off dude with a shot gun. This is ‘Murica after all. So I turned around and decided to just drive around until I hit something else of use…. sort of like using the Prius as a dowsing rod for good hiking trails. It worked!
Somehow I found myself driving by Swamp Road, an old dirt road I never noticed before. A big sign read it was closed for winter and if there’s anything better than a dirt road to explore it’s one that’s so ill-used it’s closed for winter. Plus I have a fondness for swamps. I flicked on my directional and started to crawl into the woods at the usual 15 miles an hour, if that. There wasn’t a house anywhere in sight but there were a lot of trees! And then right after crossing a little bridge I noticed something odd. it was either a very long driveway or an unmarked trail. Turns out it was a trail that entered the Sharon Bog area. I parked, grabbed my camera, and headed in! Emboldened by a sign I found requesting no dirt bikes or off road vehicles.
The trail was pretty wide at most points and pretty obvious it was a trail but it wasn’t marked, or named, or even frequented, as far as I could tell. It was SO QUIET out there, not a soul in sight for miles, the perfect little escape for even the most ardent of introverts. I could hear a great horned owl in the distance asking, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?” And I was super happy to find a little salamander just living his little salamander life on the trail. He was pretty grumpy with me, didn’t want to turn his adorable little face towards the camera but I made due.
Eventually this path went into a field and I had to cross it halfway to see if it continued and from there I passed a number of different forks, again, completely unmarked. This was an adventure after all, though not one for people who need the reassurance of markers. I made it pretty far into the woods on that path before I was stopped, by a HUGE German Shorthaired Pointer. I stayed still. I knew that breed is known to be neurotic. It barked and barked, and backed off, and then came back to bark at me. Eventually it gained the courage to come sniff me. I stood still as I could and it seemed to go from a bit fearful to very playful, this time trying to run off with my macro lens. His owner and a MUCH older canine companion loitered behind. I had a brief chat with his owner, who said he was a dog of impeccably high energy that needed to be allowed to run like this EVERY day or he’d be too insane to handle. Made sense. Pointers aren’t pets. They’re working dogs… but in any event she was doing a great job with him (she even said she’d continued to walk him in the winter with a pair of snow shoes!) That’s hardcore, especially for a woman who looked like she was of retirement age. I bid her adieu and continued on. That’s when I came to a very obvious Y in the path. Did I keep going straight or should I turn? the turn looked more interesting but was also riskier being unmarked… plus I’d already been walking for at least a mile, maybe even two. I went straight and not long after that found myself at the end of a dirt road staring at two houses. HMMMM. I didn’t know where I was… so I turned around and went back to the car.
Eventually I’d meet up again with the dogs and their owner. This time since the dog recognized me he zipped around running full speed around me for maybe thirty laps. It was impressive! Besides this I didn’t see or hear any one else the entire time. And then when I got back to the car I decided to keep going and explore the rest of Swamp Road. I am glad I did! Because not far up ahead there was a GORGEOUS turn off where you could stand on the rocks and watch whooshing white water crash by you. I could feel the cool coming off the water and feel the noise engulf my being. I LOVE rivers! I took a few snaps before returning to the car feeling super happy about today’s little outing.
A few months ago a friend of mine bought a motorcycle and asked me where he could find some nice winding roads like you see in the commercials. I shrugged, “Up the mountains…” I had forgotten this whole conversation when he asked me recently if I would like to join him for a trip into the White Mountains. Sure, why not. I didn’t ask what was in the White Mountains that was so interesting, I just assumed he wanted to go up Mount Washington… because that’s what everyone does. I should probably note, even though I live in New Hampshire, the three hour drive has kept me away from such a trip until now and… well…. I vastly underestimated a great deal of things.
I should probably mention yesterday was one huge clusterfuck from sun up to sun down and how I managed to get anything done is beyond me. I learned that morning, by randomly looking it up, that Mount Washington was closing for the season the same day I was going up it and also it closes at 4PM. And they stop allowing people up it forty-five minutes before closing. He showed up at 11ish. We had time…
The GPS again thought it’d be hilarious to take some bizarre route… Clearly it was drunk today. None-the-less I drove until 1PM and then took an exit to find a gas station, as was the plan, but by this time I had already lost my follower. How I don’t know. I was trying to behave myself. He scooted off ahead and was several exits further than me so after a brief discussion we decided to just head north and try to make it, although by now we’d just be slipping under the radar. My GPS said I’d get there at exactly 3 but after several miscommunications, and taking a wrong exit, it was now reading 3:17. Crap. I had to put a move on. So I sped up, zipping through the mountains. It was GORGEOUS. Suddenly I was surrounded on all sides by vibrant oranges, yellows, and reds, every tree blushing as I went by. If I created the world this is what I would make it look like! The fall foliage made me skip for joy. And the mountains!
Forgive me for thinking so little of mountains in New England but I didn’t think the White Mountains were anything special… I mean I have been all through New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts, and although all these states have mountains they’re just cute little tree covered hills for the most part. But the White Mountains? They were proper mountains! They started to grow in size I drove closer and they took my breath away. They towered above me as I drove past all these places I had heard of but am yet to explore – the gorge, the White Mountains National Forest, the Basin… I will definitely be coming back!! This reminded me of my days out west when I was floored by the sight of the Rockies. These weren’t quite as grand but for New England they were still pretty impressive! I can’t believe this was hiding here all along. New England continues to surprise me and keep me in absolute awe.
Eventually I ended up close to the Auto Road but my GPS thought it’d be funny to drop me off in the middle of the woods… so I turned around two or three times trying to find this place. My friend had already made it. The gorgeous weather and the fact it was the last day to go up made the toll keepers more lenient. they were still letting people in but by now it was well past 3PM. I looked it up online – apparently the Glen House was near by. My GPS also didn’t know what the Glen House was and when I attempted to get navigation on my phone the internet kicked out. What can I expect in the mountains? I was irritated. Very irritated. And I had skipped lunch to race here.
Finally my GPS read “Approaching Mount Washington Auto Road.” I was ready to fling that piece of shit out the window… “WHY couldn’t you have told me that an hour ago?!” Low and behold there was the road! I drove in and went through. The guy at the gate told me I had ten minutes before they start shuffling people off the mountain. I smiled, forked over an outrageous $29 and continued on! I had my follower back, waiting for me just beyond the gate he drove up behind me.
I’ve been up and down mountain roads before. I’ve driven on narrow roads. I’ve even driven on roads with cliffs or embankments. I had no issue with any of this but I can’t say I expected this road to be like one of those death roads like you see in photos of South America. It was just wide enough to let two cars through, practically kissing mirrors as they passed. To one side was the mountain, no ditch or breakdown lane, just a wall of unforgiving granite. The other side of the road was a sheer cliff face – no guardrails, no nothing to catch you if you didn’t drive exactly where you needed to. It was a winding snake of a road with no room for error ‘least you wanted to topple off and die… and apparently people do… every year. Probably should have known that before I tried it. I was actually doing pretty well but it kept going… up and up and up… and then other cars started to come down and we both had to inch by each other going two miles an hour, a feet that the Prius was not really up for if I am to be completely honest. Prius has a habit of sliding backwards whenever I am going under 15 miles an hour…. so this was actually more difficult than just passing another car and trying not to die. It’s at this point I started cursing loudly and to myself. Then the car would pass and I would be OK again… until I glanced over to my side. I could suddenly see just how far up in the air I truly was and just how fucked I’d be if I messed this up. No room or time for stopping I just kept climbing! So did my friend on the motorcycle. I wondered at times if I was going too fast or slow for him… but he stayed back there.
This was the longest seven and a half miles I have ever driven. By the time I got to the top I threw the Prius in the first parking spot I saw and leapt out to kiss the ground. I MADE IT. And I couldn’t feel more invigorated or alive as I did just then. There, just beyond the ground I was so thankful for standing on, there was the most amazing view I have ever seen. Stretched out for miles and miles there were dozens of peaks and mountain tops all layered like cards in a deck. A raven flew on the currents as wind swirled and swooped. I couldn’t help but think of all the Nordic myths where their gods live at the top of the world, looking down.
There was remarkably little cloud cover today so I got a few pretty decent snaps. We were able to wander the summit w here there were a few tourist attractions – a building that I think was a restaurant, a gift shop, a train stop, the actual summit, a weather station… a little marker gloating over the record for the world’s fastest wind recorded here. It was 231 miles per hour if you’re wondering.
This was the perfect time to come up the mountain because on the way down there was no traffic coming up it, being closed and all. This meant the trip down was a lot easier! I could glide down the middle of the road and be just fine! The rest of the cars ahead of me did the same and before I knew it the smell of burning breaks became all too apparent. There are many turn offs on the way with little signs alerting us to stop and let our breaks cool down. I saw many cars turn off… but the Prius is small and only smelled for a moment. I let it sit when I got to the bottom…
Acadia is one of my favorite places to go. The park is enormous and has something to offer everyone. It has hiking trails of all levels and capabilities for the athletic among us but it also has a variety of stunning views you can either see directly out your car window or very easily access. If that’s not enough to tempt you there’s also a number of beaches both rocky and sandy and a few other attractions that lure the curious.
I have been to Acadia two or three times already, always off season, and I didn’t pay anything to get in because of this, but I guess I was either too early this year or they changed their policy. Some of the park remained free – like the drive up Cadillac Mountain, but by the time I got close to Thunderhole I approached a toll gate and had to fork over $25 for a week’s pass. That’s OK though, it was worth it.
This visit was a short one as I was busy socializing for most fo the day and only arrived at 2PM but I still packed a lot into a few hours! I especially wanted to drive to the summit of Cadillac Mountain to get a few nice foliage photos and enjoy the fresh mountain air. I was shocked how many people were here! But I guess when the weather is a freakish 70-some-odd degrees people are more likely to come out and enjoy nature at its finest. I stopped at several points to take a few snaps and enjoyed the summit as well as the Overlook at Blue Hill the most as far as the mountain went. I ended up shuffling out onto the bare rocks at the summit and enjoyed a bit of time just soaking in the view – which included all the colorful trees I could wish for, a delightful pond, a few islands off the coast, and unseasonably blue skies. It was hard not to stay here forever. Unlike many parks Acadia is open 24/7 all year long…. Obviously this means I must return once more… at night. The view must be amazing then! I wonder if you can hear loons or if wolves exist in the park…
Anyway, that flight of fancy erased from my mind I continued onwards, driving back down the mountain. On my way I had to stop the car to let a deer pass and took a shot out my car window of a second that was staring at me from a few feet away. I got one good snap before another car barreled by in the travel lane scaring them both off.
 I wanted to see Thunderhole – which is this rock formation at the coast that makes a thunderous noise when the waves from the ocean rush through it. I have been told about it for years from all sorts of relatives ad friends and had yet to check it out… but first I passed Sand Beach, the main sandy beach in the park, and had to get out to amble for a bit. It was low tide. I had never been here during low tide. I must say all the exposed rocks gave it extra character! There wasn’t too many people there at this time of day, or year, certainly no polar bear swimming club to be seen, but there were a few families playing with nerf balls and kites. I’m surprised there weren’t any dogs – as they are allowed in the park.
Truth be told these people were probably all here to take advantage of the sunset which was closing in soon. It was a good vantage point for that – though not the best conditions today. It was a bit gray out.
Well! I must admit October has been rough for me, and it always is, if I’m to be honest. As much as I wanted to do a TON of traveling this month my body keeps slamming me. My last little jaunt into the woods, which wasn’t far at all, laid me up for two days afterwards, and although I feel great today I knew I shouldn’t be pushing it. That’s why instead of hiking up Pack Monadnock like I’d prefer I instead decided to be a total sissy and drive the auto road, taking my foliage photos mostly from the parking lot. That being said I had a blast!
Right off the bat I had the guy at the toll gate laughing at me as I handed over my four dollars (I summarized my desire to just drive up to the summit for a few snaps, but I guess in a humorous way. I often have no idea I’m being funny but that’s the joy of life, isn’t it?) From there the drive up the mountain was one long groan coming from the Prius. If that car could talk it’d be screaming, “WHHHHY?! JUST WHHHHHY WOULD YOU DRIVE ME UP A MOUNTAIN?!” Because Daisy is still laid up. That’s why. When I finally reached the parking lot the place was packed! I found one space at the very end and like a pro parked the worst I have ever parked in my life. You know the kind of parking an old lady would do while plowing through someone’s front porch… This happens every time I know I am being watched by strangers. I couldn’t save face so I just hopped out and owned it. “WOW, why do I suck so bad at this?! Let me try again!” I was guided in by a nice hippie gentleman who I conversed with for a few minutes. I gave him the impression I was young and new at driving, though not intentionally. My way of not dying of embarrassment I suppose.
I was a bit sad to find visibility today was really poor even though the foliage wasn’t half bad. Figuring that out I decided to check out some trails. The trails were scattered and strange. Immediately, while I was still a bit skittish from parking, a group of college kids asked me if I could take their photo. I obliged and they complimented me on my T-shirts and hair. I smiled and said thank you and had I not been totally overstimulated in that moment maybe I would have held a slightly longer conversation with them but alas! My mind was drawing blanks, a lot of them. It does that.
From here I made my way to the little observation spot that was set up for birds of prey. There was a big grease board denoting which birds had been seen today. I had no idea we had so many damn varieties of hawks. No wonder those little SOBs were so problematic when I had chickens! There were three sightings of eagles today. I had seen my last one a couple weeks ago while driving around Mason somewhere so I knew they were still in the area. People seemed kind of grumpy and bored here so I wandered off to where the vibes were better. I went down a few trails here and there, following some red dots, and got a few more little views. It was a nice mountain and the foliage was great but the visibility today was piss-poor. Too much humidity clouding up around the trees! Ah well, I did try.
Once I got to the feed store I decided to take an equally ridiculous route home. That’s how I ended up in Sharon, a town I had no real reason to be in. As I drove down some beautiful rural streets I noticed a cemetery smack dab in the middle of nowhere. (My GPS claimed it was 80 McCoy Road. I just discovered the “Where am I?” button and am bouncing with delight at that one!) And when I say smack dab in the middle of nowhere I mean it. It was a small cemetery surrounded on all sides with forest, contained within the boundaries of a stone wall. From afar it didn’t look that interesting – very typical marble stones from the 1800’s. White marble ages poorly and that’s why I tend not to have any interest in them but it is still October and I did promise more spooky places so off I went.
There was a little white gate facing the road. It wasn’t open but there were no locks on it either. There was also no markers telling me which cemetery this was but Google figured that one out for me. I opened the little gate and walked in. There wasn’t much to see at first, this was a small cemetery of maybe 100-150 stones, none drew me to them but the feeling of this place was surreal. It was like I was walking into a bubble where time was lost. The stones here had once been repaired, a few split in half were fused back together with supports and propped back up, but even this effort seemed to have been a long time ago. Moss grew over the supports. This place felt utterly forgotten. That’s when I noticed something weird. Off to the side of the cemetery, past a little stone wall, there were new plots and they were really new. It was if most of the cemetery was the 1850’s or so and then 2017. Hmmm. I headed over to check them out.
These new stones were scattered like confetti on the grounds. They faced all directions and made no sense what-so-ever. Stranger still were the stones themselves. While most were rather ordinary there were a lot that were… odd. The most normal of which was a very modern stone with a modern etching of a lighthouse, a beach, and an old Studebaker driving down the road in front of it. It read, “On the road again.” That just made me shiver a bit. Why had I approached this one stone in particular while trying to take photos for a travel blog? A message from beyond… perhaps. Or just a coincidence. The next stone however was even more startling.
It was on the very edge of the cemetery and didn’t even look like a gravestone, it looked more like building debris. It was raw cut granite, very raw, with the tool marks used to quarry it still visible. It also had an engraving… of a mouse or a rat. I’ve seen a lot of gravestones and many of them have remembrances of cats and dogs on them, sometimes horses or birds, but this is the first mouse/rat and it belonged to an old couple. I might expect to see this on a young Goth’s stone, you know someone who died in the 90’s at age 25, but an elderly couple?! This seemed to be another possible message from beyond… as I used to breed fancy rats and mice many years ago. They brought me such joy I had often joked about getting one as a tattoo or memorializing them on a cemetery stone. I smiled. I liked these people, whoever they were.
Back in the old part of the cemetery I noticed a bizarre corner that seemed more confetti-like than the rest. I noticed those stones were also new and even had a bench overlooking them. They seemed even more raw than the rat/mouse stone. In fact one of them appeared to just be a rock that was already in the area, engraved thusly. Here there were a whole row of educators, scientists, mathematicians, and a few house wives scattered between them, though one was very sweet in stating, “Wife, mother, and a great woman.” She wasn’t going to be left out with the three descriptions! This also made me smile. I bet you these were some damn interesting people. At the very back another natural rock was affixed with a plaque remembering “the angel woman.” I wondered what this meant…
ust as I was leaving I noticed two stones which had been scrubbed clean. They were from the 1800’s and had been so thoroughly cleaned up they looked brand new. I wondered why these two stones? Before I reached the car I also found a tiny orange grub-like caterpillar. I tried taking a photo but he seemed incensed I was trying to handle him , rolled into a hedgehog ball, and clenched all his tiny feet together. There was no unrolling him.
