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.
I was only going to stay in Maine for three days, really, but then my mother’s ride to the family reunion couldn’t get the day off so I ended up staying up here for two weeks, and then there was a death in family so I had to stay for the funeral, so another week passed, and then…. it was only a few days away from when a Viking ship was supposed to come into port, and you can’t expect me to pass up a Viking ship… So here I am!
We got out late this morning, my mother came with me, and drove the two or so hours to the coast. I wasn’t 100% certain where I was going because my GPS refused to recognize “Rockland Public Landing.” So I guess I can add public docks and piers to the many places which do not have an address to put in the GPS. I figured it couldn’t be that difficult, just go to Rockland and drive along the seaside until I find a Viking ship…. I’d pulled off similar stunts in the past. I was told there was a big jetty you could walk out onto that had a lighthouse at the end. That seemed hard to miss…. so where was it again?
I pulled in what looked like some sort of dock or pier, and it was, and it was public, but it wasn’t the right one. But I thought I could see what looked like a Viking ship in the distance, near a lighthouse…. so I asked the GPS where I could find a lighthouse and it brought me to Owl’s Head Lighthouse…. three and a half miles from the first unnamed pier and out in some residential part of town. It seemed to have its own park, a little swimming area, and you could crawl into the lighthouse for a suggested donation of $3. By this time I was so overstimulated from trying to find the place I totally skipped on taking a photo of the actual lighthouse…. so for this one time only I have taken an image from Google. SORRY.
The lighthouse was tiny, enough to fit ten or so people in at a time. There was an old man at the door letting people in who asked us to sign the guestbook and leave a donation and I smiled and said I would. He seemed to be getting a kick out of me, I think it was my fading but still bright orange hair. I crawled up to the top with no problem and saw the big rotating light bulb. Apparently it’s getting ready to be retired. Pity! I looked out over the harbor… no viking ship in sight. Hmmm. My bid to get a better look from a high vantage point was doing me no favors. I asked the attendant about it. She had no idea but someone else who went into the lighthouse with us did. “OH! We JUST got in at the 10AM showing! It’s PACKED! It’s at the Harbor Park, you know where the Pearl Restaurant is…. but we parked at the Y!” “GREAT, THANK YOU!” I smiled again. See, sometimes unscheduled detours have their reasons, what was the chances of getting directions anywhere else??
So back I went up that same three mile stretch of “main street.” For anyone looking for the Rockland Public Landing let me help you out. Just type in The Pearl Restaurant. It sits in the parking lot. You could also type in the Rockland Yacht Club which is also right there. I drove in the parking lot and it was PACKED, a huge queue formed off the Yacht Club and just beyond it…. A VIKING BOAT! The next twenty minutes was me trying to find parking somewhere nearby and the twenty minutes after that was my phone being an ass and taking me a preposterously unnecessary long-cut to the boat. But there it was, the 
It seems people from all over were checking out this ship. She was stopped in Rockport Maine for a few days but she’s on a tour down the East Coast from there stopping in Massachusetts and Rhode Island before going farther south. When we boarded we were shuffled in like sardines and listened to one of three speakers tell us about the bow. It was ornately carved. Ropes were draped everywhere from where they had to hoist the sails. They spoke about the wood used to make the mast, apparently at one point it snapped in half and they realized they had used the wrong kind of tree…. a replacement Douglas Fir stood in the old one’s place.
After this we were filtered to the next part of the ship to listen to the next speaker who told us all how dangerous it was to hoist the masses. I took photos of rope like I’d never seen it before (and perhaps I hadn’t.) The boat began to churn a bit as the water became the tiniest bit rough. I got a bit queasy. I really wanted to come out here today but truth be told I’m literally phobic of the ocean and being on it. The only reason I was standing here was because I knew it was moored to the dock! If it were sailing somewhere I’d be tweaking… Mum got a bit dizzy from the gentle back and forth. A footprint carved into the floor was pointed out. It was a replica of a footprint they found carved out of an actual Viking ship but no one could say why it was there…. lucky omen? Sign of the Gods? Sign of boredom? Who knows! I took more photos but it was pretty dang crowded.
At the other end of the ship we learned all about life on it. Apparently if they were doing this Old School there would be around 100 oarsmen chugging along when the wind wasn’t going. The oars were not in place today, probably to allow people to squeeze through. I was horrified and amazed to learn there were no sleeping quarters below deck. As it turns out Vikings specialized in somewhat quick voyages, lasting 30-90 days, where they would sleep on deck in seal skin sleeping bags which fit two crewmen each. I admired more little artistic embellishments and my jaw probably hit the floor again when they said this ship could creep up rivers in as little as five feet of water when need be. And then it was off the ship I went, snapping more photos and taking a small stroll onto the pier. I wanted to walk out to the lighthouse which I suspected was at the end of it buuuut by now it was getting SUPER muggy and I was drenched in sweat and we kinda just wanted to go home. I’d even forgotten about my desire for a lobster roll. Oh well! It was an awesome day! And I am certain I will be back…
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… 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.
So after my little
My GPS led me to some church on the corner. I decided to keep driving, glad I did, because the bog was at the very end of a dead end road. There was a little parking for maybe ten or so cars and there was already an adorable old hippie couple getting off their motorcycle. Told you bogs are for weird people. Anyway! I signed the log book, forgot to look at the map or grab a brochure, and then wandered haplessly into the woods, as one does.
Most bog walks are very short for the simple reason that few people appreciate wading through leech infested waters. This bog however was set up really nicely. Instead of one tiny path leading to the water’s edge there was a boardwalk constructed through much of it allowing you to really see this body of water in all its glory and it was beautiful, the most beautiful swamp I have ever seen. I was really digging it until some woman caught up with me and wouldn’t pass me. She was making some sort of clicking noise, I think trying to lure out a woodpecker or something, but it was starting to irritate me. I turned off on the “Point” trail and went up until a fallen tree made me think I should go back the way I came, which I did, by this time having lost the clicking woman.
Along the way I heard hundreds of bullfrogs but wasn’t able to see them. I did spot a family of ducklings and the biggest garter snake I have ever seen in my life. The scenery was spectacular and decorated with the buzzing of dozens of dragon flies. Oddly enough there wasn’t a single mosquito out there. It was a really sweet quiet walk. Eventually it started to get dark and since I didn’t know if this was a loop trail or not I headed back, meeting up with the old hippie couple again which I bantered with a few moments speculating on the stone wall out there. They told me it was probably shorter to keep walking the way I was going but I just felt better going backwards and seeing familiar sights since I had twenty minutes until five PM, which is normally when the forests get dark (and damn do they get DARK!) I looked at the map after getting out of there and I had made it a little past half way… perhaps someday I shall go back and do the rest!
When I drove up the parking lot was HUGE and pretty empty. I got out of the car, took a quick snap of their glorious wonky polar bears standing above the park’s sign. Oh, this was the kind of roadside kitsch that I live for. Still, the building was very nice, had a HUGE gift shop filled with all sorts of shiny, sparkly, and fluffy things, and the staff there were super sweet. I paid $20 for a ticket and an extra dollar for a little bag of corn to feed the ducks and deer. Who knew a place like this had ducks and deer!
Sure enough as I walk in there’s a line of little aviaries, each housing 2-3 pheasants, and a deer pasture filled with Fallow Deer. Aside them some ducks swam in some murky water. There was a group of Asian tourists already there playing with the deer so I put my corn in my pocket and headed towards the caves, promising myself I’d stop to dole out my treats before leaving.
That’s when things started to get just a smidge strange. Suddenly I found myself overlooking a spiderweb of wooden pathways and stairs climbing up and down in every direction. It was like a real life M C Escher sketch. Total chaos. I had no idea where to go or why. As it turns out it didn’t matter. The vast web in the middle was just some sort of trap for small children. Eventually if you walked to the other side you’d come across the entrance to the “caves.” Mind you, when I thought of the word cave I thought this would be a cavern underground, maybe with a few slimy stalactites and stalagmites. You know… like most cave tours in the US… Instead “cave” in this instance seemed to be a very loose term to describe the various hollows and holes that formed under a giant pile of granite rubble. Some of them had little metal stair cases to get down into and since I am here I might as well go down to see them! That may not have been the brightest idea. I’m 5′ 8″ and maybe 140 or 150 pounds and had a hell of a time not bumping my head and squeezing through. I noticed all the other people here (maybe 10 or 15 in all) were content to watch me be the only foolish one to try. But dammit, I paid my $20, I was going to see it all!
I read online, “bring a jacket because those caves are cold!” Seeing as caves generally are cold I did wear an over shirt, but between the humid heat above ground and the strange physical positions I was putting myself in, I was soon sweating bullets. I mean just soaking wet. Totally drenched. In seconds. Welp, that didn’t go as planned. I used the over shirt to sop up the excess sweat and moved on.
It didn’t take me long to go through the whole park. There’s a few things there that weren’t open yet – a “maple house” (I’d call it a sugar shack) a rock climbing wall, and some precipice you could “gently repel down.” All and all I think this would have been a great place to go if I were seven or so… I don’t honestly suggest anyone my age or childless should go check it out… although that being said I did have a ton of fun feeding the ducks when I got out of the caves. I really miss owning ducks. They’re such funny little creatures. I moved on from them to feed the deer who were basically rabid for corn. WOW. I got covered in soooo much deer drool. And isn’t that what life is all about? I still had fun!
