Highlands Highlights

More Highlands highlights. I’m sure the photo, as amazing as it is, doesn’t do the real thing justice. Still, that I know someone who was there and actually stood there to take the photo makes it that much more real.

Shameless Plug

For our middle daughter’s study-abroad blog and her most recent post, Highlands Preview.

Mission Accomplished

Three months later…

After setting the goal of riding the entire length of Route 11 for myself last year, I can now say, “mission accomplished.” No, really.

Strangers in a Not So Strange Land

After riding through the rain and mist, and escaping whatever ghosts there were (or weren’t) in the Haynesville Woods, crossing into New Brunswick and rewarding ourselves with a very nice German-style dinner, Don and I made our way up the eastern side of the St. John River. Our destination was Eagle Lake, Maine, home of legendary (in Maine, anyway) legislator John Martin.

We rode about 350 miles on the first day of our trip. Rolling out of bed the next morning I was reminded how much more physical riding a motorcycle is than driving a car. That I was probably a little more tense because of the rain most likely added to the muscle strain, but a little Tylenol and a little more Motrin took care of that. Some coffee and a hearty German-style breakfast (no beer, thanks), along with clearing skies got us ready for the day’s excursion tracing the northeast border of Maine and the St. John Valley.

Family Portrait

Click image for full size – 16 MB Flickr download (via Government Technology)

Okay, everybody! Smile!

A Stone of Hope

When we visited the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial last fall I was struck, not only by the symbolism of the “stone of hope” coming “out of a mountain of despair,” but by the figure of Dr. King himself. To me the look of determination on his face and the unfinished nature of the statue say that the work is never done. While progress has been made overcoming official inequality there are still other ways inequality threatens America’s place as a “land of opportunity.” It’s not about envy, it’s not about division, it’s about real opportunity in the long term best interest of us all.

Post #328

Among the things I planned to do over my little holiday vacation, I managed to do at least one of them today, which was camera shopping with our middle daughter. Chelsea and I share several interests, including photography. She has had a succession of film and digital point-and-shoot cameras and had the use of a Canon dSLR for the two years she was high school yearbook editor. Looking ahead to a semester abroad in Ireland or Scotland next fall, she wanted to find something more capable and have time to learn how to use it.

Buying another point-and-shoot, though technology has continued to improve, would have been a lateral move – a better version of what she already had (by better, I mean faster, and better image quality). Digital SLRs are still pricey, especially for a college student who’s been saving up. Even the mini-dSLRs or compact system cameras can still be a little hefty on the budget, but there are many good “bridge” or advanced point-and-shoots out there.

I have never been an early adopter of technology and finally gave in to digital in 2004 (though I still have my 1982 Minolta XG-M). My choice then was the Fujifilm FinePix S5000. It’s been a good camera to make the transition from film to digital, but it’s also getting a little old. And it’s always been slow. Slow to boot, slow to shoot. Just. Plain. Slow. Shutter lag, the bane of digital cameras everywhere, was less on the S5000 than others in the same price range at the time. But the new cameras we looked at today were soooo much better.

After looking at several cameras in different price ranges and capabilities Chelsea chose the Nikon Coolpix P500, a definite step up from her first Coolpix several years ago, and her more recent Fujifilm FinePix pocket camera. We also had a much better time camera shopping at Photo Market than at Best Buy (and the salespeople at Hunt’s were helpful, too).

Home Again, Home Again

I’ve been back home from Milwaukee for a week and a half. So why am I posting now? Well, truth be told, it’s partly in response to my mother saying, “So I’ve been waiting to see more about your trip to Milwaukee on your blog.” Really? Well, then, I guess I’d better get to it.

Problem is, I tend to have ideas for blog posts and sometimes write them down along with a couple of thoughts in the moment. Those are the ones I feel guilty about when I don’t end up writing full posts. I come back to them later and… wait, wait… nope, nothing happening. The post ideas that vanish before they are even half-formed in my head are just casualties of the fleeting thought process. The ones I later delete because they are no longer timely or what I thought I had to say no longer has any energy behind it are the ones that make me feel bad.

Big Bald Peak

Having whetted our appetites with the pleasant walk up Bradbury Mountain the other day, our middle daughter and I were looking for another hiking experience on Father’s Day, something a little more challenging. We found it.

Pleasant Mountain isn’t a long drive from where we are, but it’s interesting to note the change in decorative motifs. In about an hour you go from coastal/nautical, to country, to alpine. Since Pleasant Mountain is home to the Shawnee Peak ski area and not much more than a stone’s throw from Conway, New Hampshire and the White Mountains it doesn’t take long for old buoys as wall decor to give way to skis crossed on the gable ends of a faux Swiss chalet.

The point of our trip wasn’t to study people’s choices in decor, but to explore the landscape. It’s easy to overlook places like Pleasant Mountain because they’re so close to home. Even though I had never really been there I thought, “Oh, it’s only Pleasant Mountain. How exciting could that be?” The answer is, pretty exciting.

Bradbury Mountain

As promised, today was the hike. For the first time in several years I put on my hiking boots and took to the trail. Okay, granted, it was only Bradbury Mountain State Park, the summit of the mountain for which the park is named is only 485 feet, and the Northern Loop and Tote Road trails are little more than a walk in the woods. Still, it was nice to actually take that walk in the woods, instead of just talk about it.

Given the weather lately I wasn’t absolutely certain we’d really want to go out today, but the morning was sunny and warm, and the showers were supposed to hold off until afternoon anyway. I got a little turned around in North Yarmouth and Pownal, but eventually found my way back to Route 9 and the park. No one was in the gatehouse, but we went and parked anyway.

We (our middle daughter went with me) met a few other hikers along the way, including people with small children, and group of mountain bikers, though it wasn’t anything like crowded, or even busy. The Northern Loop trail is one of the easiest routes to the summit and was a very pleasant walk, not even half an hour. Once there, we looked around, took some pictures, sat on the bare rock in the sunshine, and just enjoyed being there for a bit. We took the Tote Road trail back to the parking lot, looked at each other, and said, “That was fun. What’s next?”

Because it’s so close, we’ll probably go back to Bradbury Mountain to explore some of its other trails, but I’m already setting my sights on longer trails and a little – just a little for now – more challenge.