It's Halloween morning and here's what Reny's is featuring on sale today:
Take your pick--rake or snow shovel. And this is called a snow scoop, I think. Anyway, it will move a LOT of snow at a time. We don't have that much snow yet. We don't have any snow yet except for that one day of tiny flakes. But I guess we better get prepared.
This looks like a bunch of golden trees, but in fact, there are no leaves on those trees, that's just the golden morning sunshine. I love the view from my verandah. :-)
It's still gorgeous but to quote my friend Michael in his Facebook status . . . "there are more leaves on the ground than on the trees." Autumn is definitely coming to an end. This is at the bottom of my hill looking up towards my house.
On the road to Dartmouth, I had to go through Bethel, so I took a very short detour and returned to the field where the Olympia Snow snow-woman had been. Alas, she had completely melted (no surprise, but I felt compelled to check).
They even removed the sign that told about her (but just the information on the sign, not the framework):
This is tricky because today I drove through Maine and Vermont to get to Dartmouth University in New Hampshire. (Well, I drove across New Hampshire first, and then south through Vermont, and then crossed the river to get back into New Hampshire.) So the tricky part is: does this count as something to do with Maine and so it goes in this blog or does it count as a travel outside of Maine and so it goes in my travel blog? I decided to put the Maine part in this blog and the rest in the travel blog. You'll have to click here to go see what Paul Harvey would call, "The Rest of the Story."
The fascinating part of the trip in Maine was the town of Rumford. I was caught by surprise to see a giant lumberjack on the side of the road. I probably wouldn't have stopped except that it looked exactly like a statue of a man holding a muffler (instead of an ax) that was located on the road near Hollins where I went to college for my bachelor's. There is such a funny story about that statue and how it mysteriously appeared on campus in the middle of the night one night. And so instead of driving by, I decided to stop and take a quick photo. And that led to all this other cool stuff that was located in the same area.
These are flat metal sculptures perched around the park. I assume it's to artistically remind everyone about the early settlers and the Native Americans who once lived here and yet not impair our view of the river, the falls, and the natural beauty.
And here's a little tribute to Edmund Muskie who grew up in Rumford, Maine. Who knew?! Well, probably plenty of folks, but not me, not until now.
This has nothing to do with Maine . . . this has everything to do with bad tires. How can I have a repeat of this freakish tire incident??
And this time there's a baby one as well as the gargantuan one.
Good Year says it's not their tires, it's road hazards. Hmmmm . . . Let's see. I've been driving the car for 32,000 miles and within 800 miles and 8 weeks of each other, once in Massachusetts and once in New Hampshire, I get the same road hazard that creates an "I've never seen anything like it before" bulge on my tire? I replaced the Good Years with Dunlaps this time.
BTW, I've seen the reports of the problems with old tires and I checked the dates on these. They were only 4 months old when I bought the car, so it's not that problem.
We know about dogs and their owners looking alike and they say that over time, couples start to look like each other. So I wonder what the type of pumpkin you carve says about you. Here are Karen's photos of each of her guests with their pumpkins.
An important part of our Maine Community Heritage Project is gathering GPS coordinates of all of our locations so that we can pinpoint locations of the places we're talking about on a map. Then using GIS sofware (Geographic Information Systems), we can create these cool, layered maps. We can also create "layers" for Google Earth and we hope to create walking tours where folks can see the places in the photos we're scanning but also see where the places are. I'm not describing it very well, but trust me . . . it's gonna be cool!
Today, MRM and Nancy and I got in MRM's car and started driving all around Farmington and Farmington Falls. Nancy knew where we were going and navigated. For our first stop, she said, "Turn right. Now slow down. Turn in here." And we parked next to a logging truck on an empty lot:
Turns out, that was the site of Farmington Falls School. Wow. You gotta really know your local history to know that. There were zero signs, no indicators, she just knew. Good thing we're capturing this information now! Here are the other places we went to today:
On north side of river (I forgot to ask the name of the river . . . good thing we're on a team), site of Farmington Falls Mill (can't tell you which one . . . one of the things we're learning is that the same site would change hands many times and even what was milled in the building would change):
Sorry these aren't very flattering photos or even very interesting ones. I had my iPhone in one hand taking pictures while trying to upload them to Loopt online service where you can share with friends your current location (yes GPS wise or in my case by using triangulation from cell phone towers) and what you're doing. In the other hand I had a second GPS and was confirming the numbers that MRM was getting and Nancy was writing it all down.
On south side of river . . . another mill in Farmington Falls:
Oops, I didn't get the name of this cemetery:
Two photos of Measuring Rock . . . one of the surveyor's spike (hey! I saw one of those earlier this year on the Appalachian Trail hike!) and the other of MRM getting the EXACT GPS coordinates by climbing on top of the rock. :-) When the first settlers came, they didn't have surveyor's tools so they improvised. They picked this really big rock as their starting point. It stands out, is easily located, and is somewhatly central. Then, because they didn't have traditional surveyor's chains that are one rod long, they took pieces of bark and made rods. And then they set out to mark off the land into plots. Today's surveyors are impressed at how accurate their measurements were and nobody's every changed their property lines.
And a very friendly dog at the private home on whose property Measuring Rock is located. Fortunately, Nancy knew the family so when they came out to see who was climbing on their rock, they were delighted to see Nancy and they welcomed us. Shwew!
Heading back to the car after measuring the Measuring Rock:
Next was Gower Cemetery. It was a short but steep climb from the road to the cemetery. The other cemeteries are right next to the road. This one is NOT visible from the road and you really have to know where you're going to find it. This is such an adventure!!
This is a little cemetery and only has 2 headstones in it.
This person fought in the American Revolution as denoted by the Sons of the American Revolution marker next to the grave.
This is the site of Stephen Titcomb's House. It burned down in the 1950's and the site was razed and the basement filled in so there is NO sign of it ever being here. Nancy wasn't sure exactly where in this field it was located so we got to pick. ;-) She did know it was below the knoll and above the pine trees and visible from the road, so were pretty close.
Case cemetery:
We're now back in Farmington, north of Farmington Falls (we actually might have been back in Farmington 2 stops ago, I don't really know, but I know for sure in this photo we're back in town). It's the site of a school. Nancy knows which one. I was focused on my technology and didn't get it written down. I remembered it had the same last name as the man whose house is up the road a little bit but I don't remember the name. There are many advantages to having a great forgetter but when you're dealing with history, it's not an advantage. Fortunately, my role is about the technology and getting future teachers involved which I can do and do well even with a good forgetter. Melanie found an apple, which we thought was pretty ironic since we were at the site of a school. But then again, it was kind of creepy because there were no apple trees in sight, so where did that apple come from??
Now that is a lovely way to spend a Saturday afternoon. :-)
