Too busy to write

    For the last six weeks, I have gone dormant on this blog. There is a very good reason...I sold my house. I've been hemming and hawing for years about selling my house and I finally did it.

   I had been taking my time with plans. I was pretty sure my realtor would be Eric Meyer. I've known Eric since high school since he sat behind me in home room all four years. Eric has been a realtor for a long time and is very good at his job.

   I contacted both Eric and a lawyer in June. We needed to get some legal work done first. By early September I was finally ready to take the plunge. I had warned Eric that he would need to be patient. I took a long time between steps. For example, I wanted to cut my grass before he took outdoor photos. So because of rain on my day off he had to wait an extra week before I gave him the go ahead.

  When he finally put it on the market on a Monday, I told myself that it was okay because it would take a while before it would be sold. I'd still have time to pack at my leisure and remember the good times from my childhood home.

   Things did not work out that way. By Tuesday afternoon we had an offer for more than the asking price. We had until Wednesday to accept it. The even more pressure was we had to be out the door by October 1st 

  And that my friends is why I haven't written anything. Between that Wednesday that we accepted the offer and the first week of October (they extended the deadline by moving the closing) I have been packing and organizing.

  I had thought I had gotten all of the crap out of my house two years ago. After my back healed I spent a lot of time at my house getting rid of a lot of junk. I am not a hoarder so the junk was just stuff that was useless. I made a point to throw out a bag of trash a week and sometimes bring another bag to Laurie's. By the time I was done the house looked pretty empty.

  But it was still my storage unit while staying at Laurie's. I kept my baseball cards, extra fishing poles, books, my three bookshelves, and a lot of spare fishing gear. I still had plates bowls, and a shed full of stuff too big to put into a trash bag.

   So for the last month, on days that I closed at work I'd go home for a couple hours in the morning and pack. The days I opened and got out at 4 pm, Laurie would meet me at my house and he would load our cars.  I had my friend Susan, who owns a Honey Dew, save me boxes. So once a week for a month I was also making a trip to Woonsocket to pick up boxes. It was worth it. Having all the boxes the same size made packing and stacking so much easier.

  I didn't want to just throw shit into boxes. So what took me the most time was organization. I wrote on each box it's contents. I organized my books in boxes labeled guide books and literature. I put my photo albums and framed photos in neat organized boxes. You get the idea.

  But even at Laurie's house I was giving myself tons of projects. For example I found two shoeboxes full of photos that never made it into albums. Many of these were before digital. It took me a couple hours to got through the boxes. Some of the photos were duplicates. Others were just blurry or I had too many from one memory. I did the same with postcards I collected as a kid and I organized them by the state we went to on vacation. When I move again, not only do I want everything organized but I don't want to take anything with me that is either useless, dirty, or a waste of space.

   On top of all of the moving, I gave my bird club notice that this will be my last year as president. I want to go out on a high note. So I have been spending a lot of time contacting potential speakers, organizing events, and writing for our newsletter and our Facebook.

  I did go trout fishing in Plymouth one day last week catching one nice Rainbow. I don't think that one fish without a photo was worth interrupting my writing hiatus.

  The closing is any day now and I have gotten most of my organizing done. My next board meeting is Wednesday for the club so I should have an uptick in free time. So hopefully, I'll get out fishing and birding and having something worthy to write about. 

 

 

Sandwich, MA

 

Words to live by

  The last couple of weeks I have had Tuesday off from work and on Monday I have a day shift. So, when I got out of work on Monday at 4 pm we have been heading straight for the Cape. The routine is to go straight to a campground, pitch the tent, make dinner ( hot dogs one week and burgers the next) on the grill. After dinner we have gone to the beach shark fishing. All of this is in the hours from 5-11 pm.

   The next morning we have explored. The first week we went to Crane WMA in Mashpee. We go there a lot looking for butterflies. This day, we saw four new species which was great. We were in a slump for lifers. After Crane we went to Market and got a sub and ate at the Railroad Bridge. We went home kind of early that day.

   This Monday we were better prepared and got to the campground early. We made supper and went sharking. No sharks were to be had. The highlight was watching a lightning storm over Martha's Vinyard  the entire time. For three hours we watched six or seven strikes a minute. The storm was moving east over the ocean and still going strong when we left the beach.

   Tuesday, we explored a little bit. We stopped in the center of Sandwich. There is a nice little veteran's park with monuments to many wars from the Civil Wat to Vietnam. There is also an old grist mill. It made for great photos but I'm thinking the mill would make calendar quality photos during peak foliage season. It may be worth a trip down just for photos.

   Also in downtown Sandwich was an old church. The church is very picturesque. So much so that it was used as an album cover for Elvis Presley (holy crap!). the album was called " How Great thou Art". That was pretty cool. 

  Our best find however, was a natural spring right next to the town hall. The spring is popular with locals who filled up gallon jugs and large Poland Spring jugs while we were there. I took a drink and the water was ice cold and delicious.

 

 the spring next to Sandwich Town Hall

    After our stint in the quaint ( I despise that word) town of Sandwich we headed to Onset. Laurie swam for an hour and I looked for shells and stripers ( I walked to a bridge). After my walk I was low on energy ( diabetic bullshit) so treated myself to a Pepsi with sugar (instead of diet. I never drink regular soda but needed sugar this day) and a small bag of popcorn. I sat at the bandshell until Laurie was done swimming. 

   After Onset we went back to the Canal and ate a steak and cheese sub by the water. We sat at a bench eating fruit as a desert after enjoying the ocean breeze until it was time to come home.

Post script- The campground we found  cost less than twenty dollars a night. It is almost empty on weekdays. We had a side road to ourselves. The road had seven other sites and we were wonderfully alone. Laurie liked the trip so much that she went back on Thursday last week. She went to Onset and swam first. Then went to the campground. Friday she took a walk on the canal and had lunch at the Sandwich Marina. Today she left to do the same thing. It works out because I have to close on Thursday nights and open on Friday. She has the two days to herself and we reconvene Friday afternoon.

The light was not good on the church
no matter where I stood

   

Imagine this photo with fall colors

There is a cemetery near the center.We found gravestones of both Revolutionary War and Civil War vets. 

Th

Leopard Frogs

 

Laurie and I took our annual trip to Great Meadows in Concord, MA to see Leopard Frogs. This is about the only place I know where I can see them regularly. Not much of a story, there were a lot there. I caught a couple and we took some photos. 

Little Lies, Fleetwood Mac Tribute Band

 

The Stevie Nicks and 
Lindsey Buckingham
of Little Lies

  Last year, proving we are old, Laurie and I went to a couple of summer concerts in Onset. They actually had some high quality bands. One of the ones we tried to go to was Little Lies. Unfortuanetely, by the time we got down there all of the parking spots were full. Disappointed by this, we ended up seeing them at a bar in Pawtucket a couple of months later. We were blown away by how good they were. Equally surprising, I really didn't know that Fleetwood Mac had so many hits. 

   We kept track of not only Onset's concert lineup for the summer, but also Little Lies website. On July 22 they played at Onset again. Normally, the concerts are at the half shell across from Onset Beach. This is a great place to see a concert. You have the beach across the street, ice cream at the venue, and pizza on the block. This year, renovations are taking place so the concerts are at the VFW (as if I didn't feel old already)

 

 So we went to the VFW where the concert was outside under a roofed pavilion. This is not as good of a place to see a show. It is cramped and because there is a roof, the sightlines are bad. Still, we got to see these guys and it was better than not going at all. 

  Fortunately, they played last Wednesday in Canton. They played at a field in front of a school. There was plenty of parking and room to put down a chair. Straight up, this tribute band is awesome and I almost feel guilty that the concerts are free. 

  They have two female lead singers, one that sounds like Stevie Nicks and the other that sounds like Christine McVee. They have a guitarist that sings Lindsey Buckingham's songs including two of my favorites "Monday Morning" and "Secondhand News". All three singers are great. The band is also great. They have a drummer, bass, and a keyboard. All of which get at least one solo during the show. The keyboard player also plays an accordion. 

Little Lies in Canton

   I highly suggest you go to one of their concerts if they are in your area. We are actually going to see them again this coming Wednesday. They are playing in Easton only ten minutes from Laurie's house.

https://www.littleliestribute.com/schedule

America's Stonehenge

 

   If you've been in a motel, vistor center, or a gift shop in New Hampshire you have probably picked up pamphlet of at least one of the attractions in the state. One of those pamphlets is for a place called America's Stonehenge. Unlike Storyland, Santa's Village, and Whale's Tail, all of witch are in the White Mountains, America's Stonehenge is in Salem, NH just over the Mass border. A few weeks back  Laurie was looking for places to go and stumbled across it online. She asked if I had ever been there and if I'd want to go. 

   So the week we went to Wachusett Meadow and slept at PAwtuckaway State Park we went to America's Stonegenge on the Wednesday before coming home. The cost of admission is a steep $19. We were the first ones in  the parking lot. Inside the Visitor Center we watched the welcome video. The video was very informative. It was a good start to our adventure. 

   The site is a bunch of stone chambers, walls and standing stones. Thr origins of these stone works could be four thousand years old. The true origins are still up for debate. None the less, I found the stones interesting. 

 

There is a short walk up a hill to the main stones. There is a well defined path to follow. It leads you past the stones in the main area. There are chambers and a large stone table. You can read along on the map to what each of the stops are.

   After going through the main area, there are other stones arranged on the property that coincide with things such as the summer and winter solstices and the equinox. These stones line up with where the sun rises and sets. There are also other stones that line up with November sunrise and other dtes. Along this trail you are sure to see Bluebirds. The landscape is perfect for them. Though the stones were interesting, by far my favorite thing were the ripe blackberries I found along trails. I must have eaten three big handfuls.

   All in all, America's Stonehenge was interesting. I do think the price was a little steep but then I told myself they are paying taxes on  thirty acres of land. I'm glad I went the one time but I won't spend the money to go back. It is ojne of those things that I have known about since I was a kid going into gift shops and picking up the leaflets of the places I wanted to visit.

Fort Ticonderoga

  Laurie and I have been talking about going to Fort Ticonderoga for two years. It is just too far to do as a day trip at a 4.5 hour drive from the house. Finally, this year we decided to go. I got a camping reservation in the Adirondacks about a month back. We decided not to  buy our tickets to the fort until we got there. This way, if it rained and the weather was bad we wouldn't be out $60 (tickets are $30/person)

   All week we looked at the weather and it was doom and gloom. I had Tuesday off and it looked like showers and then an afternoon T-storm followed by rain on Wednesday which I also had off. This weather report never changed until Monday evening. We had decided not to go and to do our normal stuff on Tuesday and hit a movie on Wednesday.

   We ate steak tips outside on Monday night and we checked the weather again. Tuesday's forecast had changed to cloudy all day with a late day thunder boomer. Wednesday it was still going to rain. Laurie told me that an ice skating comp was at Lake Placid on Wednesday so I realized we could do that on Wednesday. The only thing was the line up hadn't been announced. We were having this discussion at 7:30 pm. 

   At 7:30 we dicided not to cancel our plans and go to Fort Ticonderoga. So I packed the camping gear and Laurie packed the food. We headed out at 9 pm. The plan was to go to the fort Tuesday. If the skating line up had people we wanted to see we would stay overnight at my previously booked (no refund) site and go to skating Wednesday. If the line up sucked we would come home after visiting the fort. We drove until midnight and slept at a rest area on Monday night an hour from the fort. 

   Spoiler alert: The line up for the Lake Placid International was terrible. I only knew one of the teams. So we decided not to go. It started raining  hard on Tuesday after we left the fort. We drove home and got home at 9 pm. I write all of this because decideding to go on the trip at 8 pm was spontanious and an adventure all in itself. But as Laurie and I said, we have been wanting to go to Fort Ticonderoga for two years and we couldn't pass up the plan. The above may not have been great liturature but it will be ingrained in our memory as much as the actual day.

   We arrived at Fort Ticonderoga at 9:15. The fort opens at 9:30 but we planned on eating and changing out of our sleeping clothes and even brushing our teeth in the patking  lot. However, the gates remain closed until 9:30 so we were stuck in a line of cars waiting at the gate. While we were stuck in line I put the car in park and we made a bagel and changed our clothes and put on hiking boots. The gates open at 9:30 and we drove to the lot after buying two adult amission tickets at the gate house. . We brushed our teeth and went in. 

   There is a lot of history at Ticonderoga so instead of explaining it all a quick time line on the map explains everything. The largest actual battle happened during the French and Indian War in 1758. Sixteen thousand Brits attacked the 4000 French and lost with many casualties. 

   There are also a ton of programs and we went to many. We finally decided to skip the canon firing demo because we wanted to actually walk on our own and also make time for lunch. Instead of going on and on about the day it makes more sense to post a bunch of photos with quick explanations since I've droned on enough.  Below is the program schedule for Tuesday

The first thing we did was take the guided tour of the fort that gave an overview of what happened there over the last two hundred and fifty years.  A view from one of the canon overlooking Lake Champlain

Below are two costumed workers playing the fife and drums. But more importantly behind them is the gate that leads into the fort

Many famous people came through this gate. I asked when George Washington came here since I knew he did not fight at Ticonderoga. They told me he was actually the "first tourist". He came after the war to see some of the battlefields of the northern theater that he did not participate in. 

   At 11:30 we took a tour of the museum, It was brief and the lady only covered a couple of items. We knew we had to make time to go back and that is part of the reason we skipped the canon firing. My favorite piece is a powder horn that Robert Rogers used. Rogers is famous for creating Roger's Rangers. The modern day Rangers (like those in Blackhawk Down) are "descendents" from the elite group that Rogers created.  Rogers  was from northern New Hampshire. I climbed a mountain named after him (Rogers Ledge) 

The museum had everthing from canon to spoons owned by the men. We had to go through it fairly quickly but it was really worth the time 

Below is a lock of hair from Benedict Arnold. Arnold along with Ethan Allen came here and captured the canon that would eventually drive the British out of Boston Harbor.

A letter written by Ethan Allen to General George Washington. These are only a couple of artifacts from the museum. The museum was worth the price of admission alone.

At 12:30  we watched the drum and fife demonstration on the parade ground. Basically they expalined a few of the orders that could be heard better and further through drum and fife than by shouting orders in battle. 

It so happend that exactly 250 years ago on July 28 the first reading of the Declaration of Independence was read at the fort. Though while it would have been cool to see the reenactment of this moment we were inside the museum and had decided to do a little exploring on our own.

Below are the officer's quarters from the parade ground

  At 2:45 we took a tour of the gardens. The gardens were created by the Pell family. They had a home on the property after they bought the land. They are the people that restored the fort and opened it to the public. Without them, the fort  was being torn apart by locals that were using the stones for building material.

  The gardens ranged from flowers to herbs. They were very formal and beautiful. Some of the gardens are themed such as this rainbow garden below.

ROY G BIV

We even managed to get a lifer butterfly. This guy is a Silver Spotted Skipper

There are oxen on the property. An ox doesn't get that name until they are five years old. Until then they are just steers.

I took another hundred photos from the fort and I may add later for my own personal collection. After the gardens we drove out of the fort. We had planned to drive up to Mt Defiance. From that vantage point Gentleman John Burgoyne stationed canon. This cause the Continentals to abandon the fort. This victory was short lived as Burgoyne's army was crushed at Saratoga a couple of months later.

   The reason we ran out of time was I wanted to see the battlefield of Carillon. While the fort itself is famous, the unknown battle of the French Indian War was massive. The year was 1758. The French controlled the fort and knew there was an English invasion. The commander decided to leave the fort and fight from the summit of a hill three quartes of a mile away.

 

   The French cut down trees and used them as firing positions. When the English came they attaked these entrenched positions with a frontal attack. They were decimated. The English had 2500 casualties compared to four hundred from the French. Though the French won this battle, it had little outcome on the war and the English won a year later.

   Still, I wanted to see where this fight took place. Because I walked around all of the trenches and read the signage I chose not to drive up Mt. Defiance. Instead, I had an entire battlefield to myself.

One of the French casualties was their general. He is honored here

Below is a trench the French used as a place to fire.

The last thing we saw as we left the site were these sheep taking a nap next to the exit road.

Pawtuckaway State Park

   

As

Laurie and I stayed at Pawtuckaway State Park on Tuesday night. It was an hour and forty five minutes from Wachusett Meadow to our campground. This amazed me that Wachusett Meadow is in  north-central MA and Pawtuckaway is in southern NH and it was that long of a drive. In  contrast, from Pawtuckaway to my house on the MA/RI border it was only an hour and a half drive. 

   The state park sits on the bank of a nine hundred acre lake of the same name. I didn't plan on fishing but did want to scout out the lake and campground for future adventures. By the time we got to the campground it was raining pretty hard. We decided not to set up the tent and just slept in the car. The next morning before heading out we did explore a little bit.

   The park has a nice swimming beach and a canoe launch. There is a small island that you can get to by foot bridge. From the island we saw a family of loons. From our vantage point I could see seven
different islands. The lake looked fishy and I was sad that I didn't bring my canoe. 

Common Loons

   The park had many picnic tablesnear the beach. We went to the beach during a lull in the rain and by the time we made it from the parking lot the rain picked up again. We watched a young park ranger pick up trash at the beach because entitled people felt they could litter. This poor guy was picking up other people's rubbish in the rain. Humans suck

   The park itself was quite beautiful and I plan on going back with my canoe and fishing gear.