Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Oops, it happened again. Another nut with easy access to military style weapons walked into a business, school, or house of worship and shot people indiscriminately. A shooter in Lewiston, Maine entered a bowling alley and a bar and killed 18 people and wounded at least 13 more on Wednesday night. Police quickly identified a local man as the suspect, but 36 hours later he is still at large. Residents across Maine have been under shelter-in-place orders and many schools are closed for a second day as heavily armed authorities continue their manhunt.

Meanwhile our politicians remain ideologically deadlocked. "The problem is the human heart. It's not guns, it's not the weapons," new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told the media. (Yes, the House managed to elect a new Speaker after 3 weeks of Republican caused chaos. Blog coming on that soon.)

Here's the problem with that "It's not guns, it's people" argument.... Every nation on earth has people with hearts. Yet the US is alone in having a civilian mass shooting practically every day. What's the difference between the US and every other developed nation— all of whom have 100% humans with hearts? It's the guns, stupid.

Maine Week Travelog #32
Freeport, ME - Monday, 21 Jun 2021, 1pm.

Once again our plans on this trip changed and we called an audible. Our plan for today had been to finish up the trip with a hike to Angel Falls— which we've postponed twice already— and then drive to the airport in Portland for our flights home. At least, that was the plan as of yesterday evening up through early this morning.

The weather was fine early this morning as I ate breakfast outside on the porch. But then as we started pulling our packs together it started looking a bit iffy. "Should we hike or not?" we wondered. We decided a few clouds wouldn't scare us off. But then, in the space of 10 minutes as we finished loading our packs, the sky opened up and poured rain. "That's it," we decided. We dumped our hiking packs, changed from hiking clothes into street clothes, and repacked our suitcases.

Our decision not to hike may seem abrupt, but that's because we already had a Plan B in mind. We'd go shopping. And sightseeing. And hiking, at least in spirit— by seeing the world's largest boot!



Down near Portland, in the town of Freeport, is the headquarters of L. L. Bean. While famous for their catalog store they also have this huge bricks-and-mortar store— fronted by a huge boot! I read about the boot over a year ago in some article about odd tourist attractions. Knowing we were headed out to Maine sooner or later, Hawk and I filed it away on our mental list of "Things to do, if we have time and we're in the area." Well, with hiking rained out we had time, and Freeport wasn't too far off from Portland.

In addition to having fun photographing and posing with the giant boot we also spent 45 minutes or so shopping inside the store. Huge outdoors-goods stores aren't exactly novel to us; we've been members of the REI co-op since practically just weeks after moving out to California.. whoa, almost 25 years ago! We wrapped up our trip without buying anything. Now we're headed to PWM airport and home.

Maine Week Travelog #30
Andover, ME - Sunday, 20 Jun 2021, 4pm.

We began the day today with a list of hikes we'd like to take. They were all short-ish, the longest being about 2 miles, and mostly in the same area, so maybe we could do them all. It would depend on how long a) the light lasts and b) our stamina lasts. Unfortunately the hike to Maybe-It's-Dunn Falls (previous blog) took more out of us than we anticipated. It was longer & involved more ascend than our guidebook indicated. We were starting to flag, but Cataract Falls was so nearby we decided to hike it and reevaluate after.



The trail to Cataract Falls was short, as promised, though it was up all the way (also as promised). The views from the top were... uninspiring. I mean, there's a waterfall there. You can see it in the pic I've shared here. But we were well above it, and trees in the narrow canyon partially obscured our views of it.

Is there such a thing as a bad waterfall? No, the waterfall itself is not bad; the issue is choosing where to spend our limited resources: time and, particularly today, energy. After this hike we realized our energy for the day was spent. In particular that meant we wouldn't get to Angel Falls today, the much more promising-looking falls we were rained out of yesterday afternoon. We figured maybe we could hike it today. The news is not all bad, though.... We've rechecked our maps and schedule (in the tiny town of Andover where we have signal) and can get to Angel Falls tomorrow, before we have to drive to the airport to fly home.

Maine Week Travelog #28
Grafton Notch State Park, ME - Sunday, 20 Jun 2021, 11:40am.

"Screw Auger Falls". That sounds like a condemnation, not a place name. But it's actually a nice little waterfalls in Grafton Notch State Park in western Maine.

The name, I presume, comes from a screw auger, a type of drill, which it looks like might have been used to carve narrow gorges through the hard granite bedrock. Actually that work was done by nature some 12,000 years ago. A melting glacier just north of this notch sent huge amounts of water down the river, water rich with sand, gravel, and small rocks. The swift water and high sediment acted like a water drill to carve out the narrow canyon— er, notch, as they're fond of calling canyons in this part of the country.

We weren't even planning on hiking this falls today but instead saving it for tomorrow. It's a short trek close to hotel we could do before heading down to the airport. On the other hand, it's a short trek and it's right here— literally on the way from our previous hike, Step Falls, to the one we plan to do next, Dunn Falls. So why not stop?

From the parking lot it's barely even a walk to the start of the action. We walked out across the broad granite flats above the falls then across a bridge to the far side. From that side were perches right on the lip of the canyon from which you could see down into it. Alas the view of the falls from there was poor.

Next we climbed down steep rocks on the far side of the canyon to the river below the falls. There was no official trail there but a few obvious use paths, now called "social trails" in the 21st century, showed where people before us had gone. At the bottom of the canyon there was no view back up into it, so we crossed the river again— this time picking a narrow spot and hopping across on rocks— and searched for a steep path up again.

The easiest route up was a steep gully that led off to the side, bringing us up to the road alongside the park. The distances were all close so we followed the road for a bit then cut back through the trees once the ground was fairly level.

Back at the lip of the gorge I found a rocky perch from which there was a great photo spot. Hawk and I took turns taking pictures there then walked back along the marked trail to the parking lot.

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.

Maine Week Travelog #24
Sandy River, ME - Saturday, 19 Jun 2021, 2:30pm.

While we were exploring the upper parts of Smalls Falls today it started to rain. I got lots of pictures while it was still sunny; see previous blog. When the rain blew in fast the fun times were over... for most people, but not for me! As everyone else was scurry to get off the rocks, out of the water, and to shelter, I was enjoying photographing the area in a new light.



I do mean new light literally. A heavily clouded sky casts light of a different color on things below. But even more important than that, it casts less light. With less light I can set my camera to use a slower exposure. With a slower exposure I can create motion blur. One type of motion is flowing water. Less light = longer exposure times = these silky ribbons of water that are a fun photographic effect to create.

Staying out in the rain was not only awesome for taking cool pictures like the one above, it felt awesome being the one person not scurrying for cover. It was like I had a superpower to withstand water. ...Which is funny, because so many people who were fleeing the rain were wearing swimsuits and were deliberately getting wet in the water. Why are they afraid of a little rain?



Alas I was not wearing a swimsuit... but I had a rain jacket in the car, so I went back to put that on. I also grabbed my tripod, to assist with taking slow-exposure pictures. In the first pic I braced the camera against a tree. There were no trees in the basin at the bottom, so that's where I used my tripod instead.

And again, it was amusing that a bit of water falling from the sky chased out all the people dressed in swimsuits soaking themselves in the water. With my rain jacket keeping my top half dry and sandals on my feet I had no worries about walking out through the water to get the right picture. In the shot above I am standing on a shoal.... I walked through the water to get to it then picked shallow rocks to stand on because the water is cold to stand in for 10 minutes while taking pictures!



Here's an example of the kind of picture I got in the rain, standing in the middle of the water, with my camera on a tripod. Notice how the water looks like silk curtains— that's an effect of motion blur— while the rocks and trees are sharply in focus because the camera is stabilized on a stand.

I couldn't take these pictures when the sun was out because there was too much light. With the sun behind rainclouds this opportunity arose. I could have simulated the reduction in light with a darkening filter on my lens... I do have some such filters, but they're for the lens I accidentally a few days ago. 😨

Maine Week Travelog #22
Farmington, ME - Saturday, 19 Jun 2021, 12:30pm.

We got a bit of a late start from Bangor this morning. Gloomy skies and spots of rain in the forecast gave us pause about whether today would be a good day for hiking. When we did some grocery shopping to keep down our dependence on eating in restaurants it started to drizzle on us. We decided to do what we could.

The drive out to our first hiking stop, Mosher Hills Falls, took nearly 2 hours. Part of that was us driving back and forth over the last few miles trying to find this very obscure waterfalls. It turns out the trailhead is unmarked and is simply a two-car wide gravel pullout off a county road in what looks like private property. The stream that feeds the falls is narrow enough to step over in many places, so that didn't serve as a helpful landmark, either. Altogether we didn't hit the hiking trail until noon. It was fortunate, then, that the falls is not far from the road.

A trail of less than 1/4 mile leads to the top of the falls. From there a trail zig-zags down to the bottom of the canyon and... kinda goes upstream. There's also a trail up the opposite bank that provides a good view of the falls.



For all its obscurity, Mosher Hills Falls is actually a fairly tall waterfall. I'd say it at least 60' high. Right now the water flow is very low, though, so it's not much to look at. It's more like a seep or "weeping wall" than a waterfall. Pictures online show it with significantly higher flow... perhaps earlier in the spring melt season.

The positive side of this being such an obscure location is hat we had it to ourselves... almost. We spotted one other hiker a distance above us on the trail while we were at the falls. She seemed to spook, like a deer, when she saw us. We didn't see her again, nor did we see or hear her car at the trailhead.

Maine Week Travelog #20
Baxter State Park, ME - Friday, 18 Jun 2021, 4pm.

I accidentally my camera. 😰 Fortunately not the whole camera; just one lens. But still: 😰.

It happened when I was climbing the Beehive on Wednesday. My 10-24mm super-wide angle lens popped out of the mesh pocket it was tucked in in the back of my daypack. I was climbing one of those iron rung ladders at the time, so the lens suffered a drop of more than 2m onto a fairly hard surface. The lens cap and sun shade popped off and rolled off a cliff. The lens itself was at the bottom of the ladder, where I could climb back down to retrieve it.

Surprisingly the lens worked okay in the immediate aftermath of the accident. I took a few more pictures with it in the next half hour or so, and those pictures turned out well. But by later in the hike the lens stopped working. The camera would signal errors every time I attached that lens. I tried cleaning the lens's electrical contacts and re-seating it several times but to no avail. It was kaput.

What's the Impact?

Breaking photographic equipment sucks, though it's not like I have no practice at it. This isn't the first time I've accidentally a lens— or the whole camera. Here are two instances out of at least 4 I can think of:

• I accidentally a lens 3 years ago. It was an inexpensive kit lens so the financial loss didn't bug me much... though when I did replace it earlier this year I bought a much larger and more expensive lens, aka "The Brick".
• I accidentally my whole camera under a waterfall in Brazil in late 2018. That was a more expensive accident as the old camera had cost me almost $1,000 new. But I was looking to replace it soon, anyway, so the loss didn't sting too badly.

Compared to those losses, this one stings a lot more. The 10-24mm zoom lens is pricey.

UPDATE: It's $1,000 to replace it! 😨 And it's been so critical to my style of photography for years. Several times during the past 2 days of hiking I've wanted to get a wider angle shot than my 16-55mm ("The Brick") can reach. I'm going to need to do something to replace the 10-24mm soon. But spend a grand— yikes!

UPDATE 2: Duh! I can send it to the manufacturer for repairs. I can't believe I only thought of this two months later.

Maine Week Travelog #18
Baxter State Park, ME - Friday, 18 Jun 2021, 2pm.

The trail to Katahdin Falls we hiked earlier today (see previous blog) is part of the Appalachian Trail. I've known about the A-T, as those familiar with it call it, since I was in the Boy Scouts. It's a 2,200 mile (3,500 km) trail along the Appalachian Mountains through 14 states in the eastern US. When I was in the 'Scouts we hiked just bits and pieces of the trail, but we were aware of the lore of "Through Hikers": those who hiked the entire trail in one trip.

:

The northern terminus of the trail is actually atop Mt. Katahdin. (Tthe sign above happens to call it Baxter Peak. That is a wealthy white politician's name given in the past 100 years to a mountain native people have called Katahdin for thousands of years.) We were close to the northern end when we hiked to Katahdin Falls earlier today. The southern end of the trail is in Georgia, at Springer Mountain.

Signposts on the Appalachian Trail are marked with a symbol that looks like an upward arrow or maybe a tree. Notice it's also the letters A and T stacked.

It turns out that second trail we're hiking today is also part of the Appalachian Trail. We saw this sign at the trailhead:



We're just a few miles down from the segment of the trail we hiked to Katahdin Falls. Tiny bits and pieces!

Our destinations on this hike are Little and Big Niagara Falls. When you're out exploring, though, it's important to keep your eyes and mind open. Sometimes you see something cool you didn't expect. Thus is was when we saw "Toll Dam" on the sign above. What is Toll Dam?



It turns out Toll Dam isn't much to look at. I mean, it's a nice stretch of river with a mountain ridge in the distance, but where's the dam? Is/was there a toll booth?

Fortunately for us there was a park ranger finishing a lunch break on one of the big, flat rocks in the middle of the river when we arrived to take our own lunch break. He explained that 100+ years ago this area was used for logging. The land owner didn't fell trees himself, though; he leased out rights to people to do it. They'd float the cut trees down this river when it was swollen with spring melt. At this spot a steel cable stretched across the river to catch the trees. The remnants of the cable are still visible here (though not in the picture). The owner would tally the number of trees, charge a toll for them, and let them past.

Maine Week Travelog #Ω-1
Applebee's in South Portland, ME - Monday, 21 Jun 2021, 10:30pm.

I'm jumping my backlog of blogs about our Maine Week trip to post an entry in real time. It's Monday evening and we're supposed to be almost home right now, but instead we're eating late night dinner at an Applebee's restaurant off I-95 nearly 3,000 miles from home before driving in the wee hours of the morning to Boston for an 0600 flight home.

We had a good plan for getting home today. Emphasis on had. We were supposed to fly out of Portland, Maine (PWM) to SFO with a connection in Chicago. We managed our schedule cautiously today and arrived at the airport over 2 hours early. Our aircraft arrived on its inbound flight. Everything looked good to go. But then just 5 before we were supposed to starting boarding the delays started.

Rolling Delays

At first it was a delay of 10-15 minutes. No problem; these things happen.

Next it was a delay of 20-30 minutes. That would make our connection in Chicago short but still totally doable.

Then it was a delay of 45 minutes. Connection getting really tight.

The delay stretched to 1 hour. "Your connections are all safe," the gate agent told all the passengers. "There's a ground stop in Chicago, so your connections will be delayed, too."

...Except while the agent was saying all flights at Chicago were being delayed, the facts were showing otherwise. Flights were mostly running on time. Ours was one of few delayed.

Next the agents admitted that connections were going to be missed and started rebooking everyone. The first choice we had was to wait in Chicago tonight for two days and continue to SF on Wednesday morning. "Or you can figure out how to get to Boston," she offered, "And take a flight out of BOS tomorrow at 6am."

The flight to Chicago was starting to board so we stuck with it. We even booked a nice hotel for two nights— at our own expense— to try to stay productive at work while waiting out this ridiculous travel snafu.

On the Plane, Off the Plane. More Delays.

Once we'd all gotten boarded the crew announced we had to get back off. Our previously full flight was now only about half full as many of  passengers had already rebooked to other options. The remainder of us filed back into the terminal for another round of rolling delays. The flight would leave at 6pm. Then 6:30. Then 7. Then 8. We stuck with our reservation knowing that we'd already arranged a place to crash in Chicago.

Then they canceled our flight.

I saw that coming. When an airline needs to cancel a delayed flight they first try to get as many passengers as possible rebooked onto other flights. Then, when they do cancel it, the stats they have to report to the DOT look better because fewer people are stranded. Well, we were part of those stats.

Because I saw it coming I'd already put in a placeholder for Plan D. I booked last-minute tickets on Southwest leaving tomorrow night for a not-awful price.

Plan E: Same as Plan C, but Worse.

At this point we could have asked American Airlines to cancel our reservations and refund the tickets. We had alternate flights already booked on Southwest for Tuesday night. But first I figured we should see how AA offered to reaccommodate us. Surprise! It was Plan C: get ourselves to Boston and take an 0600 Tuesday morning.

The Boston flight has pluses and minuses. On the plus side, it leaves at 0600 and arrives SF 0930, so the disruption to our work schedules is minimal. On the minus side, it leaves at 0600 so we're looking at a sleepless night tonight. Also on the minus side, we have to get to Boston on our own. There's an inexpensive bus, but the next departure— at 3:15am— arrives too late at BOS for us. Lyft was about $150 but said it'd take 2-3 hours for a car even to pick us up. WTF? And rental cars had become very expensive— around $350.

Ultimately we chose to rent a car for $350ish and drive ~2 hours to BOS. At the rental depot we saw several familiar faces from the gate. We got our car: a shitty Toyota C-HR. It's tiny, the engine is asthmatic, and the road noise in the cabin is thunderously loud even at 35mph. 2 hours on the highway to Boston is going to be a looong drive.

And that brings us to where we are now: at a roadside Applebee's. We decided to wait out part of the time before our 6am flight at a restaurant open late. We needed dinner anyway. This will put us on the road until after 1am but at least we'll have full stomachs. And lots of caffeine.

But hey, Applebee's didn't suck. This time. And while I ate my supper I got through to someone at the hotel in Chicago who assured me that they wouldn't charge me for having to cancel my non-refundable stay. I hope they mean it; it's almost $350 down the drain (in addition to the $350 rental car) otherwise.

Keep reading: 2am at Boston Airport