On the Road Again

Wednesday June 7- Sunday June 11, 2017                                                       Most Recent Posts:
Charlottesville to Sea Wall Campground                           Nature Journaling Workshop in Shenandoah National Park
Acadia National Park, Maine                                                                  Weekend in Shenandoah National Park

 

 

Things were wrapped up at the farm and goodbyes said.  Goodbyes to the mountains and to the window sash repairs caused by a persistent pilliated woodpecker.  We don’t want to return and find that “Nevertheless he persisted”.  Goodbye  to the little fish pond.  Goodbye to the bluebirds still frequenting the bluebird trail houses near the farmhouse one of which is in the picture below on the left near the fence. Goodbye to the beautiful sunsets over the Blue Ridge Parkway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sun sets on our time in Virginia and down the farm road we go, out of the valley and back on the road.

 

We run into a “snaffoo” literally as we are in the rig ready to leave.  One of our BRAND NEW TIRES is flat and one has lost 30 pounds of air over the time since they were mounted.  We need to be on the road by 9:00 but by the time the road service guy comes out and puts more new valve stems on, it’s more like 3:00 before we are actually on the road.  SO my plans for 200-250 mile days are out the window.  This plan had unusually long days for us but it’s worse now.

Instead it’s 4 days of hard driving  between 175 that first day and 250- 320 miles the next days.  Neither of these plans is the way we prefer to travel. Our method usually is 100-150 miles on one day and then stay for 2 weeks and do it again.  We don’t get very far very fast but we see the places we stop very thoughly.  But David’s treatments are such now that we cannot do that.  We have a doctor deadline to meet in Maine.  So it’s sunsets over Walmart for us every night.   Here are two examples.

If all we are going to do nothing but drive day after day, it seems silly, at least to us, to pay the high per night costs of an RV park in New England just to sleep and get up and do it again.  I guess you’d say this is a mini-version of the Paul Dahl travel method.  So Walmart to the rescue.  Thanks Walmart!   We saved some of our grocery shopping and other items on our list to patronize the generous stores.

SUNSETS OVER WALMART
a short lived series by Sherry Boyd

 

 

 

Not a lot of fun on this trip.  Tolls, Pennsylvania’s REALLY bad roads, some lovely scenery but we make it to Sunday FINALLY and are driving down the coastal highway, Route 1, on the chance that we can find a parking place near Red’s Eats.  

We don’t realize how close we are after we leave I 95 for Route 1 and we’re on top of it before we know it.   David says “there it is!”.    I snap a quick shot of the little building  with a line of people standing right next to the road in this tiny town of Wiscasset Maine.  Red’s has been written up in tons of foodie books, lists, and articles as “the best lobster roll in the world”.  Now that’s a big claim. 

But honestly, that’s what we thought when we were here in 2013 and why we wanted to begin our trip through Maine with the best so we’ll have something to compare all the many many other lobster rolls we intend to eat this summer.   Reds has a very interesting history.  Here’s the link to the Wiki information.   After reading this I am surely glad we were here in relatively early June.

 

There really is NO parking on the main street and the little side streets are so small that we aren’t willing to take a chance.  With our aging memories, neither of us can remember where we parked last time.  We are concluding that a stop at Reds is not to be as we drive across the Sheepscot River. 

And then I spot a big enough parking lot up the hill on the other side.  It looks like the stores are closed.  It is a Sunday after all.   Clearly we are meant to eat at Red’s.   We pull in, I jump out and go to each of the two little businesses to ask permission but they are both closed.  YES!  So we park Winnona and head back across the bridge.

 

 

 

Up ahead is the little town of Wiscasset Maine.  Reds is immediately at the end of the bridge on the right.  It is little more than a tiny snack shack with an order window and tables outside.

 

 

The line runs around the corner all the time it seems.  Today it starts only part way down the sidewalk but at other times it stretches out  onto the bridge.

 

David takes up our place at the end.  It’s now noon.

 

I walk up to see what the lobster roll price is this year.  Last time we were here it was $17.  On line I’d read that in May this year  it was $27 and the lines were still down the block.  You can see David down the line at this point and the steady line of cars coming over the bridge. 

 

I see on “Today’s Market Prices” posted on the outside wall that Lobster Rolls are $22.50, Fresh Whole Belly Clams are $21 a pint, $16 a half pint, Crab Roll is $16 and Clam Roll is $14.50.   I’m sure they are all delicious.  I’m a sea lover and a seafood lover as well. 

Today I’m splurging for this “world’s greatest” lobster roll.   All the folks standing around away from the window have put in their orders and are waiting for their number to be called.   Notice the black and white patron on the left.

 

 

He’s a local who has a twin brother and two great pyrenees brothers as well.  One of them comes down every week to enjoy all the atteniton.  This is Thor an apt name.  His owner is sitting at the only front table and wearing the red hat.  They are “regulars”  and the staff calls them by name and brings a french fry for Thor when they walk by.

 

 

 

 

And finally, after 25 minutes, it’s my turn to order.  They are definitely friendly folks.

 

Another 10 minutes and we are sitting under an umbrella overlooking the Sheepscot River.

 

 

Due to the price I reluctantly share one roll with David but just look at it. 
Lobster overflowing.
In the lower left, you can just see the corner of the container of REAL butter to pour over.
Very nice touch.  And not your ordinary hot dog bun either.

 

Food of the Gods!  
I give it an A+ and plan to do all I can to compare it to every other lobster roll in and around Acadia National Park this summer.

 

But, all good things come to an end and too soon we are walking back across the bridge to begin the last 100 miles of our 1000 mile journey from Virginia to Maine.

 

 

After a few directional mishaps in an effort to get off of coastal Route 1, we do manage to make it to Seawall Campground in Acadia National Park on the Southwest coast of Bar Harbor Island.  We  pull in to our wooded pull through site which actually has some overhead sky.  The National Park has no hook ups so it will be nice if our solar panels will allow us to avoid using the generator which I hate..

 

Around our site and throughout the campground are these pretty ground dogwoods also known as Bunchberry.

 

After getting level, we do  a minimal set up and check out the campground for other sites that might have as much sun and be perhaps a little more level.  We had to use 6 matts under the back tires.

 

It’s a lovely campground with 3 loops for tenters and one for RVs, Loop C.  Nearly all the sites in Loop C are pull through. Each site has a picnic table and a neat stone grille. 

Each loop has a restroom but no showers.  For showers there is a private concessionaire down the road.  Thank goodness we have our own shower.  There ere are water spigots to fill your tanks throughout the loop.  We have one between us and the next campsite. Very convenient. There is also a single station dump site.  We paid $10 a night for our no hook ups site.  That’s a 50% discount with our senior pass for National parks. 

The two campgrounds inside Acadia National Park, Blackwoods and Seawall, were put in years ago and designed primarily for tents and small campers.  They are very convenient if you want to see the park and the Island Bus Line services them.  You can get to pretty much any place in the park on it.  I really LOVE staying INSIDE the National parks I visit.  However, here in Acadia, from Memorial Day to Labor Day they allow you to be in the campgrounds a total of 14 days.    Because of this rule, the private campgrounds on the island do a very good business. 

 

We have plans to be in the area for the summer but those plans don’t officially start until Thursday and were made months ago.  When David had to come up 4 days prior to have 3 doctor appointments for setting up his summer cancer treatments, I was able to get these sites in Seawall.  One of those appointments is tomorrow and will take all do so we won’t manage to get into the park at all other than the campground until Tuesday.  More about this fabulous place then.   It’s an unusually high 77 degrees here today and 92 in Charlottesville!!   Charlottesville friends, come on up!

Yes, I’m a week behind again
so Happy Father’s Day to all fathers everywhere. 
We wouldn’t be who we are without you.

Nature Journaling Workshop in Shenandoah National Park

Friday June 2 and Saturday June 3, 2017                                             Most Recent Posts:
Big Meadows                                                                                        Weekend in Shenandoah National Park
Shenandoah National Park, Virginia                                                     Long Time No Post

 

FRIDAY

This post is a continuation of my previous one about my weekend in Shenandoah National Park.  It will make more sense if you have read that one linked above in blue.

At 3:00 we meet in at the Big Meadows Visitor Center which is mid way along the Skyline Drive at Mile Post 51.  We are greeted by our instructors Rhonda Roebuck and Betty Gatewood after which we receive a royal ranger welcome to the park.

I haven’t attempted any art work since we’ve been on the road as it is somewhat frustrating for me as I explained previously and ,  I don’t have room for the supplies. This workshop promised to be a way I could take minimal supplies and attempt to add some art to my written journals or, as I later found out, create a separate journal on paper heavy enough for watercolor .

 

 

Our group moved around to the picnic tables behind the visitor center and overlooking the lovely Big Meadows.  There we received our supplies and did a few small practice exercises with them.  We have water color pencils, a water color brush pen which is very cool,  a small hardbacked journal with medium grade paper and a portable palate as well as a couple of pens among other things.   These tools really are portable.   After the exercises, we set to work creating a title page for our Journals.

 

 

 

Our instructors gave one example of a possible title page, the wreath, and we rather than be individually creative, we all followed suit and created a wreath.

 

I did get a little carried away with the detail but I enjoyed doing it.

 

Toward the end of our activities we learn how to marble the covers of our books.  This turns out to be a riot!  We take one can of Barbasol and spray it out into a rectangle shape  on a protected surface.

 

Betty demonstrates how to spray the cream thickly.  At this point I stopped taking pictures to do the work but not before taking this video. It gives a great idea of just how much fun this workshop was.

 

My hands got so dirty I could not use the camera again until the end so you’ll have to visualize taking whatever colors of food coloring you want to have on your cover and dropping dots on the barbasol then using a plastic ruler to swirl them together.  Obviously you have to use single colors or know about creating colors lest you end up with some rather ugg shade of brown.

Once the colors are swirled, take your book and push the cover down into the mixture and “swish” it back and forth as was demonstrated so perfectly in the video. 

Lift the book out, scrape the foam off with the ruler and do the other side the same way.

 

Once we had all completed our covers and wiped off all the excess cream on the books, our clothes (in my case) and our hands, we set the books up to dry but not before taking this picture of our colored fingers and someone’s marbled book cover.   They really did look great and this was lots of fun.  All the more reason to find a watercolor journal that is white rather than black or already decorated.

 

 

Here’s a shot of my journal.

 

 

After some discussion about the schedule for the following day, we left for dinner. Quite a few of them went to the Lodge for dinner.    I walked back to the campground along the lovely trail.

 

 

 

When I saw this sweet face looking out at me I stopped still and stayed quite a while as she tentatively came toward me for closer inspection.

 

 

 

Except for the picture above and the last two as she left, these are not zoomed and those only a little bit.  This is how close she was to me.  I stopped dead the moment I saw her, slowly moved my camera up and never moved again.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally the deer felt safe enough to turn around and head back into the woods looking over her shoulder one last time.

 

Just then another deer came toward her from the left and preceeded her away from me.
Just after they left and I could move again, I took this video actually for the audio of the melodic veery singing all during my dear deer experience.  I misspoke in the video calling it a wood thrush but this beautiful flute is actually the Veery, also a forest thrush who looks like this.  I’ve never seen him.  Thanks Audubon for the picture.

  Click here to take a listen, it’s beautiful.

What a wonderful way to end my afternoon.

 

 

 

SATURDAY

 

On Saturday the Sun rose beautifully behind the mountains and through the trees of the campground.

 

 

 

If you saw the previous post with the picture of my lovely lonely campsite, you will be as surprised as I was when I came out of the tent in the foreground and found three squatters on “my site”.  I’m assuming they were 3 AT Thru hikers as the trail to the campground from the AT is at the end of the road behind my site. They probably thought that I was also an AT hiker becasue of my backpacking tent and perhaps they didn’t see the car in the dark.   I was surprised that they had come in after dark to set up since that would make a very very long day.  Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.  In any case, since I was packing up to leave for the second day of the workshop I didn’t get to talk to them.   That’s a first for me though to have someone stop by uninvited to share my campsite.

 

 

Our class is meeting this morning in the Massanutten Room at Big Meadows Lodge so a few of us met there for breakfast.

Eveyrone at our table felt the breakfast at the lodge was mediocre.  The coffee drinkers said the coffee was terrible.  Those of us who had sausage with our eggs thought it was about as dry as it comes and actually more like a fake sausage.  The breakfast plate also came with homefries and eggs but no toast.  That was also a first for me too.   Can’t say I’d recommend breakfast there although they had a $14 buffet that might have been better.  I should have looked it over carefully.

This appears to be the only picture I have (that’s decent) of Rhonda on the right in yellow sitting by Betty with her ‘thumbs up’ given before we’d actually tried the food.  She had a fruit plate so her experience, other than the coffee, was much better.

 

 

 

In the Massanutten Room, Betty and Rhonda had set up tables for us to work on.  At the head table were wonderful reference books on illustrated journaling and some of their own journals open for us to see.

 

 

 

 

I have a few of these books already, like the first one below on the left,  but here are some shots of the others I want to remember.

 

 

Not sure whose journal this is, but it’s a great example.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The room has one wall of windows with this spectacular view.  Class began with a few yoga stretches out on the walk you can see through the window.   After some discussion of techniques inside, we went back out and chose a tree to draw.

 

 

Back inside Betty, who is a wonderful botanical illustrator,  talked about the details of an amazing number of leaves she had brought from her yard.  No picking in the park.   We each then chose a leaf to draw.

 

We were also instructed to use the little lenses to draw a “magnified” view of an acorn which I am attempting to do here. Thanks to Betty for this picture and the first one on this postl.

 

 

Here’s my partially finished product.  Not sure if you can see the oak tree sketch at the top which hasn’t had the watercolor added.  The leaf on the left is the real leaf.  The one on the right is freehand but the shading isn’t finished.  The little acorn with the missing crown is as good as it will get.

 

Thanks to Betty and Rhonda for the examples below of how fantastic a nature journal can be.  I’ll never attain this level but you can clearly see why I’d love to be able to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a break for lunch we went back to the Visitor’s Center and our picnic table area where we learned how to use a plexiglass “frame” for getting the main points of a landscape and their relationship.   Another lightweight small tool.

 

 

 

Time to work on our landscapes of the meadow.  Some of us stayed at the table with Rhonda and did a landscape of the meadow from that distance  and others walked out into it to get close up and personal.

 

 

I’m in the close up crew.

 

 

 

Betty led us around the meadow paths and to this outcropping of rocks where we settled in to do our landscapes.  A portable stool is a handy thing to have although some preferred sitting on the rocks themselves.

 

 

 

 

 

This stool leg had a hitchhiker as we packed up to go back.  Isn’t he something.  If we’d seen him earlier and had more time, many would have wanted to draw him I’m sure.

 

Can you see the curious deer on the left as we return to the Visitor’s Center??

 

She actually moved much closer to the trail staying in high alert but not running from us.

 

I thought she looked fabulous among the varied greens and browns of the meadow.

 

 

As we left the visitor center to return to the lodge I stopped by the booths outside celebrating Trail Days.  This husband and wife team was experiencing what it is like to use a cross cut saw to fell a tree in a wilderness area where no power tools are permitted.  They were working very hard.

 

 

That is one big saw.

 

The workshop concluded with an evaluation for the association and a  discussion of what might make it even better in subsequent years.  Unanimously everyone said more time even if it cost more as a result.   Betty and Rhonda had done an exceptional job of putting an almost mind boggling (at least for this newbie) amount of information into this less than day and a half workshop.  I cannot recommend highly enough that you take this workshop and look for others at National Parks you may visit.  I must beg the instructors’ and my fellow participants’ pardons, if they are reading this, and I’ve left things out or they are out of order.  Blame the “mind boggling” part.

 

This workshop will provide you with views like this out the classroom window and at least the possibility of creating something amazing like the journal page ending this post.  Thanks again to Betty for that and to Rhonda and Betty for such a great time and fantastic learning experience!!  So much inspiration!

 

 

From one of Betty’s Journals……How to fabulously record your experiences!!.