It may look like dandruff or dust, but those white spots are really very tiny little snow flakes. Up close, they looked like tiny stars. It wasn't a real snowfall. These tiny white dots pretty much evaporated before they hit the ground, but this is at least the second time snow has been in the air. Winter's coming. :-)
Did you vote today? I did! In Farmington, you vote at The Community Center. We had paper ballots which we marked with black felt tip pens. We had voting booths with curtains (red white and blue curtains, no less--sorry I didn't get a picture of that). There were a LOT of volunteers making sure everything worked. You could register on the premises, I found that very interesting.
And look at the cool sticker you get after you vote!
This is easier than picking your own. This apple orchard owner sets up a booth in the back of his truck in the Gifford's parking lot. Since Gifford's Ice Cream is closed until March, this works out well. I paid $4 for a bag of apples that had at least 14 apples in it. I can't eat that many apples. I made Waldorf Salad and gave some away and I'm eating a lot of fresh apples. I bought Cortlands. Yummy.
It's the day after Halloween and WalMart is just bypassing Thanksgiving and going straight to Christmas. They were playing Christmas music over the intercom system, too.
Last year was my first Early Bird Special event. I had so much fun, I had to go again. It is a fascinating tradition. I arrived at Reny's at 6:03am so I didn't get any photos of people standing in line like last year. But I did get some good shopping done. I ended up spending nearly an hour in Reny's, then hit the Hallmark store and the book store. I got my movie passes, too. The local movie theatre, The Narrow Gauge Cinema, only charges $5.00 for its movies. And they have comfy stadium seating and a decent sound system in all of their theatres. They show first run movies. If $5 isn't bargain enough, you can buy a 10-pack of coupons for $55 which is $5.50 a coupon. Each coupon includes a movie ticket, a small popcorn, and a small drink. $5.50 for the ticket, popcorn AND a drink? How can you beat that?! Oh wait, you can beat that. During the Early Bird Special, you can buy a $55 10-pack for only $45. That's $4.50 for a movie ticket, a popocorn, and a drink. If you come visit me, we'll go to the movies and it will be my treat. I bought 2 coupon books today (there's no expiration date).
As you can see, Reny's is not the only store to celebrate the Early Bird Sale. It's now a whole town celebration. But I love the creativity in the celebration. :-)
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.
