Rangeley Lake State Park – Rangeley Maine

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!

It was pretty abandoned. There was an entrance booth asking me for $6 but no one to take it. Instead an honor box optimistically read, “Put money here.” There wasn’t a soul in sight. I drove in and it’s basically one road that ends in a loop and has a couple other tiny roads jutting off that lead to a beach and a boat launching port. The entirety of the loop was set up for camping – spaces for RV’s, tents, and at this time of year – creepy wide open spaces labelled by number.

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.

I must admit the beach was pretty cool as far as beaches go. It had picnic tables, grassy spots, BBQ pits, stairs leading to the water, a rocky and shallow slate lined lake bottom, and a very nice view. I took a few snaps and splashed a little bit before heading back. This time I went against the signs and took some path that led me by all these cozy little camp slots for VIP introverts. I found a little cragged cliff near the shoreline and decided to scramble down it and play for a bit. This was more fun than the beach! I took delightful whimsy photos of my soaking wet shoes (whoops, one missed step…) and marbles. I made this place look fantastic. Oh the joy of having an artistic eye. My walk back to the car was fairly uneventful except I managed to annoy a gaggle of Canadian geese and some song birds. I think all suffered PTSD from having so many kids harassing them during the summer. Never have I seen a titmouse dive bomb into the woods with a massive crash whenever they see a person. “OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD THEY’RE BACK!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!” The geese were almost as dramatic as they stampeded through the parking lot trying to get to the water and away from me. And by this time another lookee-loo was driving around, this time watching me. I get watched a lot. Is it the hair? It must be the hair. Anyway that was my visit to Rangeley Lake State Park. Was it worth the two hour drive there? Well, for an anti-social single woman like myself probably not but I know where I will be sending people who have kids!

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!

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October 3, 2017 0

Boda Borg “Escape Room” – Malden MA

Katherine had a friend who lived in Malden and they wanted to try something called an escape room and invited me to come along. They had tried to rope in a few more individuals but when this fell through the three of us went to a Swedish themed escape room nearby, Boda Borg. The idea was that with Katherine being a Swedish citizen this might be quite fun. I had never heard of an escape room and quite frankly probably never would have if I hadn’t been invited to one. My brother asked me the night before to explain my plans but not knowing what an escape room was I faltered in this. He asked what happened if I didn’t solve the puzzles in the escape room. I told him I could only assume we all would get locked in and die.

First we made our way into the city, found parking where I wouldn’t be towed (3 blocks away and a twenty minute detour of winding streets) and then we met Katherine’s friend who lived in this super sweet little one room apartment that I likened to a tiny house – just in the city! She was a very bright and friendly individual who seemed excited to bring us both along. We decided we should eat first and headed to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant. I wish I remember the name of it but I don’t. It was amazing though – especially for my first taste of Vietnamese cuisine.

From here it was a short walk to this “escape room.” We walked in and the first thing we noticed was a rack of T-shirts that read something like, “Participated in Boda Borg!” I asked if those T-shirts were for people who couldn’t solve the puzzles. Perhaps. This place had a very weird atmosphere – instead of inspiring a competitive spirit it seemed to just encourage people to keep trying. Sorta like an adult participation sticker… This was made all the stranger by the fifty page waiver we had to sign with emergency contacts and everything else. I guess that was for people who tried to eat the puzzle pieces…? I wondered what I got myself into.

We were led into the main corridor and here there were all sorts of closed doors, some with flashing lights, some with solid. We were told the ones with solid lights were ready to be solved, were shown a plate on the wall which told us which theme each room was, and was told that if we solved the puzzle in one room we’d be able to open into the next and when we solved that room we could put a stamp on our card – a souvenir for passing the test. The first room read, “Coach.” OK… we walked in and it was a tiny room that only contained a scoreboard on the wall and some sort of giant contraption in the middle that reminded me of one of those Match the Shape games you give toddlers. At the bottom there were two heavy rubber balls. It took us three or four attempts to solve it (as it was timed and kept beeping us out) before we realized we were supposed to shove our arms in the holes, grab the heavy rubber balls and heft it over a big triangle in the middle to the other side -three times. None of us were athletic or coordinated enough for this and failed… miserably. Over and over. We all decided that we were thankful we were here with friends because it was still fun that way. Had this been one of those bullshit “team building” exercises employed on a company outing we’d all be brandishing shivs by now.

We tried some other rooms. Some were really easy, most were not, and one was covered in spit from the rambunctious children who were clearly dropped here in lieu of a babysitter. We told the guy at the counter, “Uhm, someone hawked a loogie on one of the panels in the Light and Darkness room…” the poor guy there just said, “Ewe” while giving this defeated expression of, “Again?! What is wrong with these kids?!” I immediately felt bad for him.

My favorite room was just called Farm. It involved sitting on eggs (ha! ha!) climbing in animal crates, guessing animal noises, and eventually crawling out of a big outhouse prop… I enjoyed the physicality and humor. Katherine and friend were less than thrilled about the physicality aspect of it, I guess having been to a number of these before this was unusual. “Usually it’s more cerebral! Less killing of knees!” Other rooms were titled things like Rats, Pirates, Quiz Show, Light and Darkness, and Step Up. We spent a number of hours here just going to random rooms. This reminded me a little bit of the Doctor Who episode with the Minotaur who lived in a 1980’s hotel that had a different phobia in every room….

Still I must say the few hours I spent here was a lot of fun! I definitely do it again with the right people. Most of the rooms seemed to be set up for three people which was perfect. We left all a bit more physically pooped out than anyone wanted to admit… I walked back to the apartment and said my good byes before finding my way back to the car. It has been an awesome few days filled with all sorts of interesting people and adventures and I knew I’d already miss it all on the ride back… listening to Beatles music instead of the Gypsy Punk and New Orleans Funk CD’s Katherine had brought with her. (It’s always nice to share psychotically diverse music isn’t it?) By now the migraine I had been pretending wasn’t there all day was beginning to hurt too much to ignore. An hour from home I began to get dizzy and nauseous and I was happy to finally collapse in my bed when I arrived. I knew I’d pay for ignoring the migraine the next day and I did dearly… only thing I accomplished all day was the two blog entries I wrote here before sleeping the day and night away (but even so everything I did was totally worth a little punishment!) I was blessed this morning with no pain except muscle soreness as I went back to my usual life. I feel like my life is bringing me to such new experiances and joys, different positive peoples and places, that it can only get better and better. Historically speaking I’ve been very limited in what I could accomplish because of anxiety and lack of belief in myself but now… now I am only limited by health and finances and I continue to work on both hoping someday I can enjoy life to its fullest. For the first time ever I have this warm and hopeful feeling I will get there… and I will joyfully bring the rest of you along for the journey.

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!

August 24, 2017 1

Museum of the Rockies

The Museum of the Rockies reportedly has one of the best fossil collections of any museum in the country. I had wanted to check the place out for years.

Outside the museum there’s a large bronze T-rex skeleton. A cryptic sign to his side reads, “Don’t climb on Big Mike.” Inside I was given stickers to identify me as I paid my admission, they were in the form of a fingerprint that was doodled on to look like the head of a T-rex.

The first exhibit, and a rather large one, was a set of vivariums, all with bizarre frogs in them, many even I hadn’t seen before, with a few familiar faces peering through the poison dart frog and American bull frog habitats. They were adorable, even the odd pug-faced one. I realize frogs are great indicators of the health of an ecosystem and are studied by many universities but I still wasn’t expecting this.

I moved on and found a little local history section of the museum, complete with horse buggies, a Model A, a surplus army buffalo hide coat, buffalo hide mittens that looked like they’d been sloughed off Big Foot, and a number of strange devices you had to guess what they were. Here in their mock up of an 1880 kitchen I recognized a familiar tool, one part of my own kitchen, a set of hand crank egg beaters. Maybe I am old fashioned but I still far prefer these to the electric beaters most people have which are big, clunky, need room to store, and are a pain in the ass to clean. Besides, how else am I to work up my arm muscles if not making home-made whip cream?

Next I came across a section in the museum where photography was expressly denied. In the pamphlet it read, “Learn about the people who came before us.” I am not sure they could have worded that any worse but I winced going in. There were wax figures of Indians, and descriptions of their gods and beliefs. I don’t know… I can see why photography was forbidden. I had a strong feeling this would piss people off. Sort of like if I made an exhibit of an alter and put a plaque up about the crazy shit Catholics believe…

Finally I got into the dinosaurs, and fish, and sharks, and various other fossils. The largest T-rex head was here. She was impressive (though if I remember right had a male name, “Big Al” or something similar, poor dear.) One of the more impressive displays was that of the growth of a triceratops. They had the smallest little baby to the biggest adult. They also had baby miasaurs, and a baby pachycephalosaur which stole my heart. In the good old days paleontologists thought these baby dinosaurs were completely different species because they looked so drastically different from their parents, especially pachycephalosaur, whose babies were once called Draco Rex because they look exactly like a dragon. I was thrilled. I had known growing up that if you want to go into the paleontology field you get schooled here.. where research continues to be ground breaking, no pun intended. Montana remains the most fossil rich state in the union and routinely provides rarities like nesting sites and baby dinosaurs, rare sharks, and other dazzling little oddities. There were three women working in the lab here, dissolving rock in acid and extracting the bones. Another woman took some children around for a tour, making a big show of a dinosaur found with raptor teeth scattered all around it. Apparently it’d been lunch at some point in time.

I had fun, this place was neat, although I must admit they really overdid the feathers on some of the little dinosaur statues. One of them looked like a reptilian drag queen. C’est la vie.

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!

June 27, 2011 0

San Diego Zoo – California

Since we had gone to one of the country’s best aquariums I thought I should go to one of its best zoos. I ended up at the San Diego Zoo. It was already 1PM. I had read somewhere it closed at 9PM so we were good. We parked and went in. It was $40 admission, per person, to get into this place so it better be good!

The place was absolutely clogged with children and strollers. I have to wonder why parents with children young enough to be in strollers, and no older children, would even bother bringing them to the zoo. They’re not going to remember it! But anyways, I was off to see the reptiles and the bugs first because it’s just rude not to remember the little guys. I was rewarded by seeing a number of baby Komodo dragons. They had lots of cute little lizards, even a gila monster, who may or may not have been venomous – several signs nearby contradicted each other on the subject.

Most of the reptiles I’d already seen at that pet store in Houston… The bug house was next. They had cockroaches, a disturbing amount of assassin bugs, I imagine with most unemployed, a windowed bee hive, and some diving beetles, nothing fantastic. I was only impressed by their leaf cutter ant colony. You could see them finding their leaves, cutting them up, dragging them underground, chewing them up into pulp, and growing fungus with them to eat. It was neat. One wonders where you even get such a large leaf cutter ant colony, complete with every type of occupational ant, meaning there must have been a queen in there somewhere… perhaps the one wearing a feather boa.

After a brief hello to the amphibians I was finally off to see something with warm blood. To the mammals!

One of the first things I saw was a fossa, an animal so weird that I was probably the only non-zookeeper to know what the hell it was. It was sleeping on a branch, its lovely chocolate paw pads dangling in mid air. I was thrilled. I was even more thrilled to be on my way to see the tapirs. I’d wanted to see them when I was twelve at the National Zoo. I walked five miles around the park and came to their exhibit almost last only to find they’d been loaned out to another zoo for the summer. It was time to make up for that! And boy did I! They had the biggest tapir there, just wiggling its weird nose and sitting there in the sun. He was so cute and weird! Later on I’d see another tapir laying against the plexiglass, literally an inch away from me. It was awesome. I would have been happy with just these but they also had okapis, animals I’d never heard of (and that’s amazing as I know a LOT of obscure animals) all the usual crowd pullers, and monkeys galore. There were monkeys everywhere. I could care less. I’ve seen enough of the buggars, though I did like their ring tailed lemur male who was running around his cage anxiously meowing, yeah, I said meowing. Apparently they meow like wee kittens. It was adorable.

I passed by an Asian Leopard Cat enclosure and man, now I know why my Bengal cat (a house cat Asian leopard cat hybrid) smells so bad. That exhibit alone smelled worse than the whole zoo combined. After this I met a pissy mongoose. Now mongeese eat cobras for breakfast, they’re not an animal you want to be on the wrong side of. This one noted the camera was right against the bars of its cage and it charged, hissing violently and baring its teeth. It nearly grabbed the lens cap with its paws. It was a quick little beastie!

I was really hungry so I decided to get something to eat before checking out the last leg of the zoo. Though it was supper time all the little cafes were closed or closing. Annoyed I left to check out the walk-through aviary, the big one, as I’d already been through the hummingbird aviary and the budgie aviary. It was very neat and had all sorts of African pigeons and weird birds. Then a keeper showed up and told us she was supposed to lock up half an hour ago and I shouldn’t be here. So I left… and when I reached the main paths I realized the whole zoo was empty. A single gorilla watched me, obviously having waited to go indoors he probably was watching me thinking, “Every day there is at least one group of these fools.” It was creepy, like something out of a horror movie, no one was anywhere. When I got closer to the exit I started seeing more weary travelers, all with similar expressions. I found the Jeep really easy after this! It was sitting cold and lonely in the parking lot wondering where on earth I’d went to.

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!

June 6, 2011 0

National Petrified Forest – Arizona

I didn’t know what to expect from the National Petrified Forest. I knew I wouldn’t be walking into a bunch of trees, then again, maybe these trees were really scared.

I drove into the gift shop first. It was not actually in the park but outside of it. This place was a huge gift shop filled with every sort of fossil, mineral, rock, and shiny thing you could have ever asked for, all at double the prices as Sedona. Still, they had neat things like marbles, (for $4 per marble…) and lots and lots of petrified wood in every variation…. Big pieces, little pieces, polished pieces, rough pieces, pieces with bark, slices, giant slices made into tables, whole segments of tree, and in every color and series of colors under the sun. I looked around and walked out again.

I drove on to the Petrified Forest, paying $10 for the Jeep. I was told not to take any of the petrified wood and given flyers stating that taking any would result in $375 fine and that they could search our cars. Its just as well, most of the pieces lying on the ground here were enormous stump-sized chunks. You couldn’t drag one of those off without a forklift. It was basically a field of these shiny pretty rocks lying dead on the ground. There were paths weaving in and out you couldn’t leave. All and all it was rather unimpressive. I returned to the gift shop and bought a few tiny colorful pieces, both rough and polished. I left realizing the gift store was far more impressive than the actual forest (not to mention it had a virtual graveyard of geodes in the back, I mean thousands upon thousands of the suckers all thrown in giant piles.) It was interesting, and I was rewarded by seeing a teeny tiny jackrabbit baby springing away from me. Real cutie. SIGH.

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!

June 3, 2011 0