Here Comes the Rain Again

Maine Week Travelog #25
Mooselookmeguntic Lake, ME - Saturday, 19 Jun 2021, 4pm.

When it started raining during our visit to Smalls Falls (previous blog) we remained optimistic about continuing our day of road-tripping and hiking. It had rained early in the morning then dried out and become sunny; and the rain abated after about 30 minutes at Smalls Falls, too. It didn't really become sunny again, though. The skies stayed gloomy, with especially dark clouds lurking in from the southwest.

Light rain is something we can deal with when hiking; heavy rain is not. And the possibility that it could turn into a thunderstorm... well, we're definitely not going out in that. Still, we kept our hopes up as rain sprinkled off and on around us during our drive.



We stopped at a highway lookout above Mooselookmeguntic Lake. It served a dual purpose: first, we enjoy scenic lookouts! Second, the high vantage point here (the Appalachian Trail crosses the highway at this spot) let us get a better sense of the weather.

Speaking of weather, a couple of things are visible in the pic above. If you're an optimist you'll notice first the puffy white cloud and blue sky visible through that small "window" in the upper left. Occasional sights like that are why we were keeping our hopes up for the past hour. But across the rest of the picture you can see a line of rain moving across the lake toward us.

That rain hit us 2 minutes after I took this picture, and it hit us hard. The whole car was rocking side-to-side with the strength of the wind driving the rain. We realized that "wait it out" would no longer be a strategy for salvaging one more hike today. Even if this rain does abate soon, after this heavy downpour the trail will be sodden and the rocks we'll need to hop around on will be dangerously slippery. We'll put the last hike for today, Angel Falls, back onto the list and see if we can fit it in tomorrow or maybe even Monday before we leave.

Small Towns. Maine So White.

Maine Week Travelog #26
Bethel, ME - Saturday, 19 Jun 2021, 9pm.

After getting rained out of our last hike or two today (previous blog) we made our way on to Bethel, where we checked into our motel for the next two nights and went out to find some dinner. Maybe it's good we didn't go on another hike or two more because the drive to Bethel took a while, going through lots of small towns in Maine along the way, and we were hungry when we arrived. We'd only had trail snacks since breakfast.

Passing through lots of small towns on our road trip was interesting. Counting in those we drove though yesterday as well, we've seen at least a dozen already, with populations ranging from around 8,000 down to 200 or even fewer.

Many of the towns were centered around a mill— a lumber or paper mill, on the river, often near at least a small falls that helped provide power. In the larger small towns these mills appeared still to be operating. With industrial automation over the past several decades, though, it's an easy estimate that these mills employ nowhere near as many people as they once did. Indeed, practically nothing in these towns looks like it's been built since 1950— except the standalone dollar stores on the outskirts.

When in Doubt, Worship the Flag

Continuing with the theme of nothing new since 1950, there were so many World War II memorials in these towns. Not just memorial parks, but actually recently signs, banners, and parade routes lined with flags honoring WWII veterans. I respect WWII veterans 💯 but *checks watch* the war ended 76 years ago. Spending so much effort honoring something that long ago, at the expense of recognizing anything that's happened in the past 76 years, is unseemly.

Consider a few figures. The youngest WWII vets would be 94 today, and most would be older. Very few survive. Multiple sources I checked estimate that approximately 300,000 out of 16 million WWII service members are still alive in 2021. That's less than 2%. The National WWII Museum, Veteran Statistics counts 1,797 WWII veterans living in Maine. With a statewide population of approximately 1,365,000 million people, that's 1.3 vets per 1,000 people. So if a small town of 3,000 people has a proportional distribution of WWII vets, they have 4. Four people is hardly a parade.

Maine so White

Another thing you notice traveling around Maine is that the state is very white. Maine is the whitest state in the country. According to US Census, QuickFacts, Maine the state is 94.4% White alone (not White/multiracial). Coming from very diverse California the state's ethnic homogeneity is striking even in larger towns and cities where there are more immigrants and tourists, but especially in these smaller towns where it's like, literally everybody here is White.

When we went out for dinner this evening, Hawk was the only not-White person in the restaurant. Out of about 50 patrons in the restaurants, plus all the staff, she was the only not-White person. And... there seemed to be problems because of that. 😨

Racist Treatment?

When we walked into the restaurant the trio of staff at the front counter immediately informed us they couldn't seat us right away. Nevermind that the people right in front of us were taken to a table right away. Suddenly there was a wait of "At least 10 minutes" for a table.

"How about we sit at the bar?" we asked. There were lots of empty seats at the bar.

"No, you can't sit at the bar," the said. "We can't accommodate anybody else right now."

A man— a White man— standing behind us grumbled, "This is stupid," and walked around us.

A minute later a fourth staff member joined the trio at the front counter, and together they decided they could seat us. A hostess led us to a table... where we were ignored for several minutes.

Actually, we were worse than ignored. We were gawked at. Multiple staff members stared at us and spoke to coworkers while pointing at us.

After several staff had pointed at us from across the room, the manager came over and apologized for the delay. She promised she'd find someone to serve us. Then she went off to shmooze with other customers and take their orders... without deigning to take ours or even find someone else to take ours.

Just as we were both about done with being the hapless stars of this seemingly racist circus show— oh, I forgot to mention, at the front counter they were selling t-shirts with a racist, anti-government flag from the Confederacy stenciled on them, on the weekend of Juneteenth— a waitress came over to take our orders. She was genuinely polite! She spent a good amount of time with us answering our questions about things on the menu, gave us helpful suggestions, and then brought our drinks quickly. She was so good we held our skepticism in check (besides, would any other restaurant be better? Plus at peak dinner now going anywhere else would probably cost us at least 45 minutes) and stayed for dinner.

Ultimately the food was good and service— from one person— was fine. It's such a shame we were treated like a circus freak show.