Leaf Peeping in New England (part 2)

(Part one is here)

View from the Long Trail House room balcony, Stratton Mt., VT

We pulled into Stratton Mountain’s lodge at dusk. Dusk came early, an hour earlier than it does back home. But the lodge was fabulous. I had a suite with a fireplace!!!, and a balcony overlooking, well, a small lodge pond with fountains. Each floor had a free laundry (yay!) (Hope the guy who left the sopping-wet black long johns in the dryer didn’t mind me taking them out so I could put my stuff in. They’d been in process when I arrived. Two hours later, he still hadn’t retrieved them.), and the cable was MUCH more extensive than any other hotel’s.

A lodge village was adjacent. Almost all the stores had construction people in them. The stores themselves had been stripped bare, or had various bits of lumber in them. They were being prepped from scratch for the ski season ahead. About three blocks in was a restaurant that was open. I wasn’t that hungry, and ordered a salad with an appetizer-sized quesadilla. Godzilla could have filled up on it. (And been quite happy, since it was deeelicious!) I ate half, got the rest put in a doggy bag (the suite had a fridge and microwave), and decided on a wee bit of hot chocolate for dessert. It arrived: a King Kong-sized parfait glass, half-filled with hot chocolate and half-filled with whipped cream. Out of politeness and because it was just a drink and not, you know, a real dessert, I consumed the whole thing. (It made up for the restaurant not being able to produce decent iced tea. Once again, a Yankee iced tea tasted like it had been brewed with a hefty helpin' of old coffee grounds.)

The next morning I watched The Patty Duke Show and Mr. Ed as I ate my quesadilla’s remains. Checked email from my cover artist to discover she didn’t remember that I’d made a special webpage with all her instructions, so I had to try to track that down on my iPad through accessing my office email archives so as to email her the url again while I made my way outside to be 15 minutes early for the bus.

Whoops. I was only 30 SECONDS before the “butt in the seat” time, but I did manage to make it. AND send the url.

Mt. Washington. You can see the train track that goes straight up its face, like an exclamation point. Note also the uber-ritzy resort. No, we did not stay there.

Today’s travel brought us to some quick stops here and there with nice views. We drove past Mt. Washington, Vermont’s highest mountain (or did we do that the day before?), and then through New Hampshire. The proliferation of maples and other colorful trees mix more evenly with spruces and pines in NH. The landscape was ever so slightly not as impressive, foliage-wise, although the mountains were fabulous because that’s what mountains are. I love mountains, as long as I don’t have to drive in ‘em.

View from patio at the Red Jacket Resort at North Conway, NH. The room door leading outside to this tiny patio had a small sign that said: "Door locks automatically. Please take your key with you." Yes, I'm sure people just waking up and taking their coffee outside to enjoy the morning, while dressed in little or nothing, would take note of that sign.

I must have mixed up the order of previous sites because we still saw a lot today, but at dusk (so early!) we arrived in North Conway at our hotel. It was so-so. The tour provided dinner for us because (I think) the town didn’t have that much going for it food-wise, or other restaurants weren't easily accessible for us bus-tour types. Dinner was nothing to write home about. And the next morning I didn’t get a wake-up call.

Wake-up calls are IMPORTANT, especially when the tour is timed so precisely. Every night I’d program a wake-up call through the phone, set the radio alarm, and set my iPad (which I’d practiced with several days before departing, to see when the alarm would go off and when it wouldn’t. The iPad has to actually be on to sound the alarm, so I recharged every night and left the iPad on while doing so.) Anyway, the radio often wouldn’t work because the stations turned out not to be 24-hour stations, and morning would arrive with only a slight hissing sound. One hotel’s phone programming didn’t work, so I had to call the front desk and have them set it up. One hotel’s phone programmed, but never called me. This happened again at this hotel, and I stopped at the front desk on the way out to inform them of this mechanical failure.

They told me that since we were on the tour and phone calls weren’t included in the price (we’d been told at the beginning of the tour that if we made any calls or incurred any other extra charges, to be sure to pay before we left), they TURNED OFF our alarm programming along with outgoing calls. Uh, isn’t that something they might warn us about beforehand?

So we toured Maine that day. All through Vermont, NH and Maine we kept passing lots of pretty lakes. We went past Maine’s largest one (according to our tour director, though the map seems to show a larger one to the south), Sebago Lake, just before we came into Portland. There we stopped at the harbor for lunch and shopping, and the director gave us TMI about how he was attracted to a girl who worked at the local bakery. This meant that many of the group took off at a dead run to tell the girl and embarrass both. Why do people do this?

Lunch was delicious, but when I ordered the iced tea (yes, we’re going into this again) I told them how much I distrusted Yankee tea. They assured me theirs was great. It was not. I took a sip and told them I didn’t like it. They took the glass away. When I got the bill, they’d charged me about $3 for the tea. The bill had to go through the manager to get the tea taken off. Other than that, lunch was tasty.

I got a cute little magnet for the fridge that shows a panicking lobster in a pot. Got another tee shirt. I always tried to get a magnet and at least one tee from each state, and each morning as I struggled to close my luggage I wondered why I had to do that. I dunno. Our director had told us about a kitchen shop he loved, and because we had a little time, I wandered in. And wandered out with kitchen implements. Yes, on vacation I bought kitchen implements. One was a scraper I’d been looking for and one was one of those push-pull measuring deals Alton Brown uses. I hadn’t been able to find either in stores back home.

Is this not the world's cutest lighthouse?

Then it was time to cruise! It was a surprise thrown in because the weather was nice. We saw a bunch of lighthouses around Portland, and rode some fun wakes like a roller coaster. We could actually see the very tip of Vermont’s Mt. Washington from the harbor. I must have taken a zillion pictures, and just as we got to the prettiest lighthouse ever built, my camera battery gave out. Yes, already. It must have been old.

Thank heaven I hadn’t been able to find said battery when I was doing preliminary packing for the trip, for I’d gone out and bought another. Then I found the battery. That meant I had two backups for the trip. I’d made sure the final backup was in my purse instead of my luggage, so I was able to pop it into the camera and get those lighthouse pics! Manoman, are they going to make great paintings!

Getting back on land, we all headed toward the nearest bathrooms. This was a one-seater, and the line began to stretch around the restaurant that housed it. Our Fearless Leader was distraught that we needed bathrooms. Really, Brandon? What, do you wear astronaut diapers? He had the bus take us back to the visitor center, which had a few more toilets available, and this time (unlike when we’d first arrived in town), the cruise ship hadn’t just arrived with a load of liquid-filled passengers.

From Portland we traveled a bit south to Kennebunkport. Now, Kennebunkport is one of the nicest-looking towns you’ll ever see, but it’s spoiled by having Bush vibes. The Bushes have grabbed the best real estate in town, and that day all flags were flying there, meaning George H. was in residence. Yes, they fly flags, just like Windsor Palace does when the queen is there.

I think we missed the Changing of the Ex-Presidential Guards.

The bus dumped us downtown for shopping, strolling and fudge-buying. I got lost about three times, but downtown’s pretty small and if you walk far enough, you can figure out where you are. We had more than enough time, and I said what the heck, and decided to check out the many art galleries.

Wow, wow, wow! They had fabulous artists on display! Here was Ken Muenzenmayer. “Hey, I took a class with him,” I told the owner, who was actually impressed. Other artists who stood out to me enough that I wrote down their names to research were: Li Wang, Ellen Pelletier, Dan Michael, Charles Movalli and his wife, Dale Ratcliff. (I hope those links work for a long while. If not, Google a bit and you'll find some paintings by them.) I’d KILL to take a class from the last two. Their work takes your breath away. The owner of the Landmark Gallery told me that Movalli had once told him in a class, “Once it looks like a kitten, you don’t have to add whiskers to it.” He said the guy paints with large brushes and it seems haphazard until suddenly everything comes together. Wow.

We got into our hotel and prepared for a lobster dinner that was included in the tour. I’ve had bits and pieces of lobster in various stuffings and chowders through the years, but I’ve never had lobster-lobster. Yes, I’d once stood for forty minutes next to the tank at a Red Lobster (I had ordered food for a party, and RL had lost my order; so professional), and decided I’d never order lobster because these guys looked like they had personalities. But I ordered lobster this night.

Still less messy and 'roid rage-y than what I witnessed that night!

It SHOCKED me the way people laid into their lobsters! First of all, the things were about five hundred degrees. I kept burning my hands on mine. The woman across from me gave a Xena yell and attacked hers with sheer Hulk fury, spittle flying out of her mouth. It was scary. And the lobster wasn’t really anything special. I could have gotten the same texture from shrimp, the flavor was nonexistent, and I SWEAR to you, I got distinct, “They murdered me. I was scared. Now I’m sad,” vibes from poor Mr. Lobster.

Never again. I promise the lobster world, I’ll never have a whole lobster. I apologize.

Man, one of these days I’ll go vegetarian.

View from the Nonantum Resort, Kennebunkport. Just around the bend and beyond that thin stretch of land, is the Atlantic.

Anyway, we went back to our rooms afterward. Since I was traveling alone, I sometimes got tiny rooms stuck in odd places in hotels. This was the case here, but this tiny room had a skylight, a marvelous view of the harbor, and a little woodstove-type fireplace. Darling!

I couldn’t get the phone alarm to program, so I did it through the desk. I couldn’t get the room temperature to moderate. I couldn’t get the wifi to work. “Sometimes you have to step outside in the hallway to get it,” the desk told me. The guy came up and showed me how the thermostat I was trying to program was the one for the stove and not for the real room heating/AC. He pointed me down the hall to a PC where I could print out my boarding pass.

I wasn’t wearing my shoes, but I padded down the carpeted hallway. The PC froze on the middle page of the boarding pass process. I sat there muttering low-level curses when a man from South Africa? (he had a very odd British accent) came up, assured me that PCs and Macs were pretty much the same thing and to stop being a baby and move over, he’d do it for me. (Okay, he didn't quite phrase it that way, but the meaning was sorta there in a superiority kind of way.) And the PC froze on the middle page of the boarding pass process. Ha!

So I went back to my room in defeat. My room key wouldn’t work. The front desk was actually about a half-block away, and I was in my sock feet. For some ungodly reason I’d actually overheard and REMEMBERED two of my fellow passengers talking about their room number. I knocked on their door and got them to call the desk.

Got new keys. Got the heat/AC working. The wifi fizzled after two minutes. Decided to hit the sack.

More Kennebunkport. (I took this pic because I needed a full horse to finish a Montreal picture with a carrage in it.)

Breakfast the final day. I decided to ask a large table with four people seated if they minded me sitting there, and they assured me it would be fine, and pointed me at one of the three empty seats where I would be welcome. When I returned from the buffet they informed me I could NOT sit there, as they had seated some (absent) friends in my place. Nice of them to tell the new guys that I was sitting there already. (I'd arranged the setting to show I'd be sitting there, just in case.) I took the remaining empty chair. ANYWAY, when everyone had all their food, the others announced grace, a guy said it, and the woman across from me opened ONE eye to stare at me throughout the prayer. Like I was making a fuss, sitting there quietly as I was. Maybe she was waiting for me to burst into hell-flame. Sheesh.

I was seated next to a man. When coffee was served, his wife to his other side put sugar in his cup for him, then sugar in her own, cream for him, then cream for herself, and then reached over to stir his coffee for him, then stirred her own. She was done up like a Stepford, and he looked like he'd had a moderately busy day on the farm, all grizzled and rumpled. Later I asked around, and people told me about the "religious" group. Then I recalled an earlier day of the tour, saying something about the possibility of going to a psychic we'd seen along the way, and some woman getting all hissy. She was one of the group. Sheesh again.

But all in all, the other passengers were fine. I learned not to talk politics. The ones who (loudly) voiced an opinion—which happened rarely—had poorly-defined issues with Obama. We had one very short lady who seemed like Betty Boop’s crazy cousin. She talked in a loud baby voice (how she loved the attention!), and everyone knew she would buy anything pink, especially purses and travel bags. (And fudge.) I think she bought three travel bags during the trip. She was funny in a crazy cousin way. Good in small doses, but maybe not for eight days.

The crowd ran to middle age and older. They came from all over the US, except for New England, and one couple had flown in from Australia. One of the women often required a wheelchair. (Every place we went could accommodate the handicapped.) I wondered how her husband, who could make two—well, one and a half—of me, could handle things. He often toted her wheelchair when it wasn't being used, plus lugged their other stuff, and often did this on steps and steep surfaces. (The wheelchair was stowed under the bus when not in use. Also stowed under the buses was Evil Tour Director's bike, which he used in his off-hours. He rode almost all the way around Martha's Vineyard when his group was shopping.)

Brandon alternated who got to leave the bus first: drivers' side, door side, or starting from the back. I noticed that many people waited until the seat before them had completely emptied out before they got up, retrieved what stuff they wanted from the bins overhead, and eased out into the aisle. I'm afraid that by the end of the trip, I had trained myself to pop up out of my seat as soon as the people in front were starting to get out, so I'd be ready as soon as they'd finally managed to toddle down the aisle. Unfortunately, this means that I am now one of those people who emerge as soon as the "you may get up now" message comes through on the airplane. I grab for my stuff in the bin and stand in the aisle between the chair arms so people in my row can also get up and start arranging things. Efficiency, people. Efficiency!

I was traveling alone because I’m basically a hermit, but there was supposed to have been another single traveler on the trip. She was to have come with two other ladies, who told me over breakfast one day that she was a parole officer, and that the previous week one of her parolees (what do you call them?) had sicced his three dogs on her and they had bitten her. She would be fine, but at that point they weren’t sure if she’d have to start rabies shots or not. If she did, the shots would have to be administered on a strict schedule that she couldn’t meet if she went on tour. Hope they threw the guy in jail for a long, long time! Hope she’s really okay.

Being a single rider meant I had two seats to spread out in. I soon made a nest with my junk. There were a few empty rows in the back, and sometimes others would go back there to take a nap or stretch their legs. We were discouraged from using the bus bathroom for anything other than an emergency. On the final day, due to seat rotation (every day we moved 3 seats clockwise, so no one could stake a claim on the good seats) I was sitting near the back, and the ladies across from me had to use the john. They reported that there were signs in it that told men not to stand, and that there was also a sign that had a big “#2” on it, with a line crossed through it, like going number two was prohibited.

Astronaut diapers, I tell you.

Boston is just a short ride from Kennebunkport. We arrived there about 10 AM so people could catch their flights that had been ordered to be noon or later. Mine was at 5:30. Many others had such late flights. Some of us got dropped off back at the Hilton, where I sat next to the two oldest ladies from the group (it was the final trip for one of them, whose husband was having bad health problems. She was in her mid-eighties.), and we had lunch at the hotel restaurant. The iced tea was still rotten.

Bidding them adieu, I walked to the airport instead of taking the shuttle (exercise!). It took over an hour to get through security. They stopped me. “That’s an iPad in there,” I said helpfully as the guard got on latex gloves to search my carry-on. She pulled out an unopened bottle of sunscreen. Oops. I thought I had that in my other luggage. She GLARED at me and didn’t say a word as she dropped it into the trash.

Read for a couple hours, got an awful lemonade from Wendy’s, found a Cheers shotglass for Francine (at work)’s collection and what the heck, got one for me as well, and got in the plane. As the doors closed, someone screamed in the back. “My baby!” Something something else. All of a sudden a hysterical woman was running to the front. “Let me off! Let me off!” She had a companion who was trying to calm her. They huddled with the attendants, let off a few more shrieks, and finally the door opened. It took the attendants three trips to make sure their carry-ons were gathered, and then we had to wait for people to go through the cargo hold to get their luggage. “Family emergency” was all we were told.

Top to bottom, left to right: Vermont (maple leaf), poor little Maine lobster, Plymouth pilgrims, Norman Rockwell's very funny self-portrait cover, Martha's Vineyard, The Spouter Tavern (that's a whale there) from Mystic Seaport, and a disappointingly blah Boston magnet that I got before I determined that I was going to start collecting INTERESTING magnets, dammit!

Then home again, home again. It cost a hair under $100 to park my car at the airport. I took 433 photos. I bought, I think, eight tee shirts and seven refrigerator magnets. One big slice of fudge. Two kitchen implements. I had a bagful of hotel shampoos and conditioners. I also brought home an extra eight pounds that stuck around for almost a week before they disappeared one night, just like that. I was glad I’d taken an extra vacation day for recovery.

Bus tours are very economical ways to vacation. For 8 days I paid about $1800, if you include the final tip to Brandon and Keith (which our booklet suggested), and don’t include meals, souvenirs, or flight. All our breakfasts were included, as well as three dinners. Keith said our final mileage was just a couple miles over 1000.

I like bus tours because they give me a quick, overall view of a region. I get to be able to point at a TV show later and yell, "I've been there!", plus I now know where I want to return to to spend more time. Like after this trip I want to paint some along the Maine or Martha's Vineyards shores, and maybe on the streets of Woodstock, VT.

Caravan furnishes a booklet with all your info, including how much to tip various people and what to bring along with you. (Sunscreen, travel alarm, etc.) Even so, one of the older ladies on the tour hadn't packed a sweater or jacket. We worried about her, but she said she was doing fine.

Brandon gave us lots of info on other vacations. Caravan's #1 tour is Costa Rica, which Brandon says he's been on and wants to get his parents to go as well, because it's fantastic. (Me, I've had several very bad past lives south of the border, and have never been tempted to wander farther south than Florida.) He says that the best time to travel is in mid-season, which allows time for tour workers to figure out what their job is without them being burnt out by it all yet. If you're older, you want to travel in late August or early September to avoid kids. If you're going to Alaska (Caravan doesn't go there, but Brandon did Alaskan tours before he switched to Caravan), you definitely want a land-cruise package. Save the cruise for last so you can relax. Try if at all possible to get multiple days in Denali. Don't go until June. (He showed us pictures of him changing bus tire chains in a snowstorm on May 29.) If you go on the Yellowstone tour, hit in July or August because earlier won't get you as long a whitewater ride because the river they do it on hasn't risen enough yet.

Next year: Trying to decide: Alaskan land/sea excursion ($$$) or Caravan’s “Mt. Rushmore, Grand Tetons & Yellowstone” tour, which would allow me to see an old stomping ground I’ve been wanting to revisit, as well as do some location research for my novels if I tack on a couple extra days before and after. Then again (and this is days later that I write this), I may take the Yellowstone tour with a Casper add-on, and then take a separate Amtrak "Empire Builder" ride, which would hit three cities I want desperately to see. Do you have an opinion? Have you taken any tours you’d like to recommend? Do you want to ride along on my next trip? Maybe we can raise a little heck!

Leaf-Peeping in New England (part 1)

I’d been wanting to take this tour for years. It was Caravan’s bus tour of New England. The leaves would be at their peak; I’d kept track in 2012 and made notes on the 2013 calendar. I cleared out the memory on my cameras, made sure I had extra camera batteries (thank goodness), and caught my flight, despite the fact that it had been changed to a much earlier one. I’d hoped I’d be able to sleep in at least on the first day of my vacay. It turned out that I wouldn’t be able to do that until I returned home.

I’ve been deathly afraid of flying, and have been trying to improve my attitude. Slowly things have gotten better, and this time there was hardly a glitch. I still can’t look out the windows, but I don’t go into meltdown and it’s been years since I squeezed a seat arm until it broke. During this Delta trip I got an EXTRA two packs of those delicious Biscoff cookies they serve, oh boy! (recipes here and here)

So I arrived in Boston around 10 AM, which was 2 hours earlier than I’d originally planned; time to check in to the Logan Hilton and hit the subway. The Hilton had a free shuttle to the subway. Boston’s subway has long stretches where metal screeches upon metal until you think you’ll scream. At one stop, an older lady got on with two adorable dachshunds. She pulled them onto the seat beside her, and people came forward to get cell pics of the cuties. Remind me to bring Purell and Clorox wipes next time I ride. The subway ticket machines (located in the underground part. For above-ground locations, you have to board the back cars and pay next to the conductor) are flanked by two burly men who help the newbies figure out what’s what. I managed quite nicely on my own, thank you, unlike Washington, DC’s confusing fare setup. $5 got me to the Museum of Fine Art and back. That’s route GreenE.

Wow. The MFA. It has a really confusing map. Frankly, I don’t think the map is correct, because every third room I had to stop someone to ask where I was, and I’m pretty good at maps. Since it had been a long time since breakfast and that Biscoff, I began in the large central courtyard and the in-house restaurant. Nice panini! Rotten tea. High prices. (But overall not too bad, as I’d gotten free admission because—surprise!—presenting one’s Bank of America debit card to pay for admission on the first Saturday of the month or somesuch means that BoA will pay your admission. How about that?)

The ancient Egypt collection was fascinating, if dry in places. Ar ar. There was an interesting exhibit from Iranian women photographers, but the Sargent display in the rotunda was disappointing. However, I did find a marvelous book of his watercolors in the store, which is tied into the show that will be there, well, starting the week that I’m writing this. I bought that online when I got back, as the paperback version must have weighed about twenty pounds alone. Tough to pack. ($9 to ship.) (Just got the UPS notice it’ll be delivered tomorrow. Oh boy! The pictures are gorgeous and so bold!)

Anyway, some fine artwork there and of course I high-tailed it to mainly the Impressionism section. They had a Van Gogh or two that was lovely. (Of course.)

Back to the Hilton with no stop at the aquarium; time was running short. I’d Googled Logan airport and there were a few high-rated restaurants there, but apparently they’re behind security. (I couldn’t find them on the way out because they were in different buildings.) So it was the Hilton for dinner (fairly nice, but too expensive for what you got; bad tea again), and then upstairs to attend the first meeting for our tour group.

Our group at the Calvin Coolidge place. I'm 5th from the left way in the back. Sunglasses peeking out.

We met Brandon, our tour leader, and Keith, our driver (I have one note that says his name was Dwight, yet I could swear Brandon kept calling him "Keith." If I'm wrong, Dwight, I apologize!!!), and received our final instructions. Caravan now offers 14 New England tours a week during peak leaf season, so that meant we had an Evil Double Bus shadowing us.  (They were the AG Autumn Gold group as opposed to us, the FC Fall Color.) We alternated our schedules daily so as not to arrive places the same time they did. (At one stop Evil Bus got the worse hotel. Ha ha! They had the people who signed up later than us.) As would happen every day, we were told times for when breakfast in the hotel opened, when our luggage was due to be set outside our doors for pickup, and when we were expected to have our butts in our bus seats.

Brandon told a chilling story about the one time he left someone behind. He counts everyone at least three times before the bus leaves. That time he’d counted, but while his back was turned a woman had gotten off to take one final shot. The bus took off without her.

In the side mirrors, they spotted her running and stopped. Brandon apologized profusely, but the woman clammed up in fury at being left behind. Finally he begged her to tell him what he could do so she wouldn’t be angry with him. “I’m not angry at you. I’m furious at my husband!”

That’s right, her husband had let the bus take off without her in the seat beside him.

So Brandon counted us every chance he got, and I got in the habit of getting up at 5:15 every day. I was never late for the bus, though once it came very close.

Our first day was touring Boston, for which we got a local guide. We zipped around in circles and, what with the overcast and drizzle, I became extremely disoriented. We must have gone by the Common five times. I did mention to the guide at one stop that I’d written a book where one scene took place at a former Boston hotel that had been the site of a horrific fire in relatively recent times. I couldn’t remember the name of the place (the Hotel Vendome), but described the street it was on. He pointed out what he guessed it was, but I thought I’d recognized a building about three minutes earlier from Google streetview that I’d done my research from. Thrilling to see the area in person!

We saw Paul Revere’s church (the one where they hung the lanterns), and were reminded that Paul came into things late and was stopped before he got too far. But he had a good publicist, unlike the others who made it through. Rest stop was in a very large food court downtown (the block had a comics shop), and though I wasn’t hungry (danger, danger, Will Robinson!) I joined the others and got a little nosh for second breakfast. It was an éclair, but instead of chocolate and a top pastry layer, its thick custard held three pieces of fruit. Healthy!

At every stop most of the group searched for places to buy fudge. (Also “adult beverages.”) That’s right. I don’t get it. The only good fudge is stuff you make yourself, off the back of the Hershey’s cocoa tin. (And even then you use Nestle’s for best results.) But they were persuasive and by mid-trip I’d bought a slice of fudge. It wasn’t very good.

After Boston we toodled off to Concord and Lexington. There were nice visitor centers and a green, colorful with autumn foliage, to admire. At Lexington the historic bridge where the “shot heard round the world” was fired, was closed to the public due to the government shutdown. (Thank goodness we weren’t on the Western Parks tour [Grand Canyon, etc.], where EVERYTHING was closed! Caravan scrambled to turn that into a Mystery Tour and refunded the money for anyone who didn’t want to operate that way.) The bus turned a couple of corners and we saw the bridge from a distance. It’s a nice wooden bridge. A few people on the bus loudly complained that we couldn’t stop, like it was the driver’s fault. Jerks.

Plymouth, Mass. Our lunch stop was far too short, and there were legitimate complaints about that. For the rest of the trip we had adequate time, or maybe we learned not to order so much food. I know my lunch (at a recommended café) was fairly meh, with an awful clam chowder. But from there we strolled to see the Rock, which was just a rock, and a pieced-together one at that. And very possibly not the correct one at all, to judge from what Wiki has to say. Anyway, someone has etched “1620” on it and placed an ostentatious neo-Classical foofarah over it. Big deal. I was much more impressed with the pole in the water at Jamestown that marked the edge of the fort there (1607, folks), and the guide there pointing out into the river, saying that 20 feet farther was likely the landing point.

Plymouth also has a mockup of the Mayflower that is NOT federally protected, because it was open. Though the day was overcast, I got a lot of good pictures of boats in the harbor. You see, I was taking pictures to make paintings this winter. New England has scads of picturesque boats. (I’m trying to find places in NC with similar sights, but so far have only found marinas wintering expensive yachts.) Unfortunately, the view outside my hotel window in Hyannis that night was not so picturesque.

The next day we hopped onto a 45-minute ferry—a huge affair that could take loads of buses and trucks and cars in its hold—to Martha’s Vineyard. Talk about a charming location! The bus drove around a bit, then dropped us off for lunch, shopping & sightseeing. After a lovely, wubbly lunch at a lovely, wubbly café (I gave them five stars on Trip Advisor!), the sky fell in. After about 20 minutes the rain stopped, but I’d been walking down some charming little streets and hadn’t been able to find cover. Good thing I was not only wearing a hooded raincoat but my wide-brimmed painting hat. Not an aesthetic pairing, but useful. My things dried out about two days later.

We’d learned that due to a recent storm, Chappaquiddick (or “Teddy K’s Downfall”) was now a separate island from Martha’s Vineyard, and a ferry that took about 2 minutes ran to it. I wandered down an alleyway that I noticed was filled with a line of cars. It was for said ferry. I was too hazy to notice Chappetc. in the near distance, darn it. Then it was back on the bus, over to the next town, and dropped off (more harbor pics!) until time for the ferry back. A lot of us wound up sitting on benches (getting sunburns under the now-blue sky), either watching the sea or staring blankly with Vacation Brain into the distance. Vacation Brain usually hit around 2:00 each day, when you reached your limit on touring.

The next day we wandered around Rhode Island because there’s not much of Rhode Island to wander around in. It’s a pretty state, and everything’s near one beach or another. A local guide joined us for Newport, a gorgeous little Navy town that also has all kinds of mansions in it. We toured The Breakers, a Vanderbilt affair in which the term “conspicuous consumption” was first coined. Holy moly. I took notes, and have now reworked my back yard to mirror theirs. You like?

Next came Mystic, CT, where we drove past Mystic Pizza (no, I’ve never seen the movie) and saw a living museum of a waterfront community. There I spoke to a lady in a horse carriage, conducting tours (no takers at the time). She’s also an artist, and we encouraged each other. Nice lady. So-so “living museum,” but maybe if someone were into such it would have been more interesting. There were two high school-age teams of rowers there, and for a while I thought they’d get on the water to practice, but they were just fiddling with their VERY long boats and practicing working in unison on getting them from the mainland to the dock, and then almost into the water without crashing into anyone. Then my camera battery died, and they decided they’d done enough. Good timing!

I had planned to take laundry across the street from the hotel (of COURSE I’d researched beforehand!), but Brandon assured me that the next night would be much better, machine-wise. Instead I set out for a decent meal. There was a fancy steak place a block away, but I wasn’t dressed for it. Instead I aimed for “Go Fish,” a friendly-sounding family-type kind of place.

Nope, it was a high-class joint. I decided what the heck, splurge on vacay. Besides, there were only a couple of people in the huge joint, and I could slink into a dark corner. The food arrived, looking like it was ready for its own Food Network Magazine cover shoot. Wow! Fancy-wancy. But icky-wicky, it was utterly bland. And I had to send the tea back. What is it with Yankees and iced tea? It’s not a difficult beverage to concoct. Why do they have to boil it or add peach flavoring to it or let it sit until it turns rancid or brew it where coffee has been? Anyway, I gave them a poor-ish review on Trip Advisor, and THEN noticed that everyone else on the site had done the same. Why don’t I read these things before I go?

The next day we traveled north to the Norman Rockwell museum in the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts. (Yes, we were back in Mass.) You know, I didn’t used to like his work at all, but now that I’m beginning to see what angle he was coming from, I kind of enjoy it. He was like the brilliant Mort Drucker or even Daumier, only operating in different venues. Satire and social commentary, that was him.

I’d seen the huge show at the NC Museum of Art a year ago, and it seems that had more to it than this museum. However, I was there for the studio, which I photographed and paced off. I asked questions, and the guy there absolutely ignored me while answering others’ questions. Hm.

Rockwell’s middle (?) son has a wing in the museum to show his modern art. Yawn. But the guy also collects toys, particularly action figures. Marvel was well-represented, with a few DC characters. The guard there and I couldn’t spot any Wonder Womans. Rrr…

Somewhere along the line we wandered into New York state, just to say that we had hit it as a special addition to the tour, but also so we could catch the right roads to come back into Vermont to catch a monument to the Green Mountain Boys (Revolutionary War, remember?) that was kinda meh, but had public restrooms and a souvenir shack, yay. Also, a fiberglas moose — one of those animals that so many cities have where they have artists decorate different ones. A lot of folks had their picture taken next to Mr. Moose.

Then it was off to Plymouth again. Wait, this one was in Vermont, Calvin Coolidge’s birthplace. Brandon played a short DVD bio to prepare us for it. I noticed that the video was all about how Cal had grown up and become governor, where he did some important things. It didn’t mention much at all about him being prez, other than that his father (who really didn’t have the authority, as he was just a notary or some such) swore him into office in the middle of the night when news of Harding’s death reached them.

The only thing I ever really heard about Silent Cal was the joke about him attending a White House dinner. The woman guest to his side said, “I have a bet going that I can get you to say five words.” “You lose,” he told her, and returned to his meal.

But the birthplace had lovely autumnal views, with the hills rising all around the farm. I think there was a fudge shop, but don’t quote me on that. There were lots of apple trees, and here, more than any other stop, there were zillions of rotting apples lying on the ground. When you walked around, you had a tendency to get rotten apple stuck to your shoe soles.

I got this Woodstock gentleman to pose for me. "Don't look at the camera!" I commanded, and he didn't. This was an extra shot. Woodstock is CRAWLING with tourists. I got a lot of good people shots.

It’s all starting to get hazy to me, and some of these stops are out of order. We stopped in Woodstock, VT, which is just about the cutest, most New England-y town you could ever imagine. Shopping! Lunch! It even had a covered bridge, though its bridge had been re-built in the Sixties. I had lunch at a place where they served excellent tea and promised them I’d review them very well. (Oops, must remember to do so.) The tour director from the Evil Bus sat a few seats down from me at the bar, and we listened to a semi-crazy lady who had no version of an Indoor Voice talk about some of the wild and wacky things she’d done. Evil Director told me that their tour, AG, stood for “awesome group,” unlike our group. Boo! We made up for it later that afternoon, when our bus passed Evil Bus. Our people made rude gestures at them, and we could see Evil Bus Director shaking his fist at us. Fun.

I checked out a library book sale (danger! danger!) because the library had a john (they encourage the public to make a donation if they were going to use it, which I did and did) and emerged from the building with a book. Evanovich. Smokin’ Seventeen. Blech. I’d sworn off buying one of her books ever again, but at least she didn’t get any profits from me. I needed a book so I wouldn’t finish the Lois McMaster Bujold book I was halfway through, and was saving for the plane home. (Turns out I still haven't finished that, as I finished SS on the trip home.)

We had one food rule on the bus: We could bring in anything we wanted except ice cream. Ice cream got messy. It seemed a shame to leave Vermont, which seems to have an ice cream place on every corner, without some, so on the way back to the bus I stopped at a creamery and ordered a SMALL milkshake. "Milkshake?" the girl behind the counter asked me, puzzled. "Oh, you mean a frappé." (And she pronounced it "frap.") So she made me a malted milk one. Small. "Whoops, made too much," she told me as she handed me a very large covered cup. Bravely, I did manage to drink it all over the next half hour on the bus. (I'd kind of hidden the cup as I boarded.) Tasted like a chocolate shake to me. One with high butterfat content. Mm!

Not the Vermont Country Store, but down and around and up a hill from it.

Where else? Oh yes, the Vermont Country Store (you likely have one of their catalogs in your mail box) has a bunch of public toilets at their large store in Weston, VT, so all the tour buses make a stop there. The staff come on the buses when they’re about to leave and hand out catalogs, maple candies, and rum cookies. I didn’t get a rum cookie, but the lady said they had a liquid center and MAN! did the bus reek of rum as everyone was chowing down! What marketing. Put in big bathrooms if your store sits along a lonely stretch of road, and the crowds will come. (I shopped at the store across the street.)

Quechee Gorge (VT) had a couple souvenir stands, public restrooms (you’re getting that these are important, yes?), bus parking, and a FABULOUS view of the gorge. I have some very narrow canvases that are going to be painted with views of this, if I can figure out how to do it right. It’s going to call for a lot of abstraction, since there were gorgeous rocks everywhere.

Tomorrow: THRILL to the rush to get to the bus! FEEL the death pangs of the poor lobster! PAY for airport parking!

Faux, faux, faux your rocks...

Wow, strong table, isn't it? Those are faux rocks. You see, when you install a waterfall and pond, you need to have certain features, like a bubbler to keep your fishies happy and oxygenated, and an electric outlet to power the pump and bubblers.

These manmade items interrupt the back-to-nature ambiance; thus, they must be covered! Enter: faux rocks!

They cost a small fortune to ship because UPS has funny prices for large things, even if they don't weigh much. And though I knew the large one there on the right, good for covering up electrical messes, would be very phony looking (many people out here in the country use this style for covering up various things), I was surprised at how natural the bubbler rock there on the left was. (It's a bubbler rock because it has some air holes drilled in the back.) That is, until I looked at the other rocks in the landscape. Okay, not so natural.

So I toodled down to Lowe's and bought six bottles of Krylon spray paint. I already had a beige, and I'm not going to count the pink because it was the wrong pink and the more orangey pink turned out to be the right one.

At first I tried dabbing on the paint, because that's how I've always faux finished rocks before. But I didn't take into account that these have texture. What you do is to spray the darker colors first, get a good base going, and then take your various colors and spray a rag, then rub it lightly so the texture picks up what it wants to. You put on about fifty coats, and voila!

They blend in nicely with the other rocks. I've still got to dribble in some small river rock to match what the pond guys did over on the other side of the sidewalk (and to fill in over there what they missed), but this works pretty well.

I need to do any more faux finishing before cold weather sets in. On my to-buy lists: faux rocks to fit the top of the skimmer and filter (yeah, they make rocks specifically to that size), and what the heck, since I can't get anything else to work over there, a big ol' rock to put on top of the septic tank. It's about fifteen feet from the pond, and so a rock there will fit in.

Maybe I can make a business out of this?

I don't think the fishies have even noticed. They're probably mad because I haven't posted a pic of them yet. Here they are:

Leftish to right: Krypto, Streaky, Proty, and that's Comet there on the top.

Oh, mama, I got those editin' blooooz...

Okay, not really blues. More a celebration with an anguished sigh at the end.

You see, back when I was with Publisher X on my first book, I was assigned Editor Y (why? why?). I received publisher guidelines, which said to keep semicolons to a minimum (among other things). According to the University of Bristol, "The semicolon is a hugely powerful punctuation mark." Somewhere I have a grammar book that states that it is the second-most important (behind the period) punctuation mark the English language possesses.

But Publisher X wanted to keep them  a minimum. Okay. Editor Y wanted me to delete every last one. And every colon as well. Why? "Because modern readers don't understand them."

So I performed a search to delete the shameful things. Well, most of 'em. She didn't notice that eight semicolons remained. I don't recall how many colons did, but they were there. I mean, colons have a USE, and I was using them correctly.

Editor Y's specialty was commas. Take these out and put more commas in over there. And there. And there. She must have added twenty thousand unneeded commas to the manuscript, but I did it because we RWA writers are taught, "Don't argue with the editor. Or at least choose your battles."

Editor Y wasn't concerned with plot or character. She wasn't concerned with my contract, which required her to say yea or nay on my next book within 30 days of receiving the manuscript. (She kept me on hold for that decision a year and a half, and then lost the book.)

Editor Y and Publisher X are far in my past now. I've published four novels, one of which was a completely re-edited (by myself) version of the book that had been at Publisher X.

Self-publishing is an odd thing. You'd think it would be simple. I certainly did. You write a book, you throw it up on the Internet and people read it. But over the years the process has become much more complicated. (Or maybe it was all the time, and I wasn't noticing.) The market is slammed with people who've thrown their books onto the Internet.

The vast majority of these is crap. Sturgeon's Law: "Ninety percent of everything is crap." It seems that percentage may be higher for self-published books. (You can't really blame the self-pubbed entirely, as it seems to me that a similar percentage exists for books that come out of the Big 6.)

It's up to the serious self-pubbed (we're preempting the term "indie" from the old-style indies) author to make sure that her books are professionally published. Unfortunately, this requires some significant expenditure of money as well as time. Fortunately, this results in a better product.

What I'm trying these days is to re-do the books of mine that are out there: get them professionally edited, professionally covered, professionally copyrighted, professionally tracked and publicized. I'm also doing this for the new stuff.

Which brings me back to subject: I just received the first edit on Vol. 3 of my "Three Worlds" series, Lost in the Stars. I knew it had length problems, so I sent it out to a few beta readers with pleas to tell me what could be dropped. Didn't hear back from them. Bless their hearts. I tried to self-edit and managed to streamline it a tad. I could sense deeper problems but couldn't bring them to focus.

So I hired a real, freelance editor who was recommended by another author.

His edit just arrived yesterday, after his having the book for a month. Can we all say, "thorough"? Yes indeedy! He covers the book from a whole-plot point, then individual scenes, through characterization and yes, word usage.

THIS is what a real editor does.

So I am ecstatic. Someone has pointed out where my baby's faults lie, and has suggested how to cure them.

The only problem? Finding the time to sit down and give the book my full attention for a rather long span of time.

Hooray! My supervisor just granted me two days off this week. It's not anywhere near as much time as this book requires, but it's enough to allow me to get a solid start on organizing what will be the final edit.

I'm not even going to mention that the edit (from another editor) for Vol. 1 is due any day now...

Sigh!

Everyone should have one

2009. You can click on these to see larger views.

Soon after I moved into my new home back in 1998, I had my friend, the septic field digger, come by and dig a pond. I'd had two ponds at my old place: one quite small and formal (it was my starter pond), and another pretty large, with a long series of waterfalls. On days the waterfall was turned on, the level of the pond could fall by as much as four inches. Not good for a place where the well didn't hold much of a reserve.

But this was a new place. The well was deep. This pond would be circular, about sixteen feet in diameter. But we had to give a lovely dogwood some room to spread its roots, and we ran into the outermost edges of the septic field on the opposite side and thus curtailed further digging immediately. As a result, the hole was heart-shaped.

I managed to sculpt in some ledges to put some plants on, and was quite pleased by the result. I added fish, and they multiplied through the years.

But dead leaves kept building up. Despite pigeons being able to walk across the pond, the fish still survived. I got the pond professionally cleaned. I set up netting every fall to keep the worst of the leaves out.

But eventually the fishies disappeared and my longing to have a waterfall increased. So I called American Aquascapes in Mebane, and they began the process. They "finished" last fall.

Um, this didn't look finished to me. I needed more rock, they said, and one guy gave me an estimate. Another guy told me the first guy always underestimated, and added $1000 to that number. I told them I'd give them a call the day after Tax Day 2013, and we'd finish it up.

Okay, there was a glitch in there (they don't keep good records, it seems, so the crew sent out was just to clean and not finish the job), so it wasn't until this week that the waterfall (and cleaning) actually got done.

It took them a day to get everything in place.

They tried to save as many of my tadpoles as they could.

Since I'm on a well and don't want to run it dry, and because I have low water pressure, it took another full day to fill up the pond.

That was yesterday. Today I went over to get a couple more plants. The water hyacinths float and create the most gorgeous lavender blossoms! They multiply incredibly quickly, though, so you have to keep them under control. I tossed the new plants in, and they immediately got sucked into the skimmer. Now they are anchored to bunches of katniss (yes! Like in Hunger Games!), or sagittaria plants. The tiny white katniss blossoms and much larger hyacinths will look well together.

I also picked up my four free koi! After two years of being pet-less, I now have pets. They have to be fed twice a day. I went out a little while ago and couldn't find them in the crystal-clear pool. Finally I spotted one peeking out from under some lilypads. (The lilies look a bit ucky because of the construction. They'll bounce back in a week or so.)

Thanks to some tree-trimming last fall, the pond now gets a fair amount of sunlight during most of the day. Before, it had been quite shady. But now it isn't, and I've been enjoying blooming lilies this spring.

The sound of the waterfall can be quite loud until you get used to it. After that, it's soothing. And to sit out there (on the bench cushion I just bought) takes you into an instant state of meditation.

Like I said, everyone should have one!

How to have a Frantic Vacation (part 4)

Thursday: Heavy rain is forecast for all day. (It would not begin until late afternoon.) I decide to head for Jamestown Settlement, of which at least a part is under cover, but wind up saying what the heck and taking the first shuttle stop to Jamestowne, which will be a quickie.

Jamestowne (or James-towne) is the actual site of the first lasting English colony in the New World. They have a column set up that, if you look past it into the water, marks the site the first foot was placed on what was then land. The fort's foundations have been found (again, one side of it extends into the water, as the bay has grown on that side) and there are archaeological excavations going on.

I arrived too late to catch the name of our guide, but she'd been 14 or so when she'd arrived on the third ship to come to Jamestowne, and she'd been one of the few survivors of the famine. Eventually she married a man who'd been on the first ship. They'd gone back to England, the man had been promoted and given a good position and pay (she gloated how she'd chosen the right guy), and eventually they'd returned to America.

She gave us a great intro to the site and told us about the research people were doing in these Modern Tymes to discover what life had been like. She made sure we knew about "Jane," the 16 YO (? might have been 14) girl whose remains had been found very recently, who was the first real evidence of cannibalism that had been made necessary by that famine, when the settlers had been too terrified to leave the fort to gather food.

There's this twiggy version of one of their buildings, and there's also a brick church—but that church was a later one, done towards the end of the 17th Century. The chimney's an original one, though.

One of the excavations concerns a bakery. They've just taken it down to the level where people of the day would have actually been walking. The clay has been baked hard by the ovens, and work there was considered punishment duty because of the heat.

You can see the battlements in the background. The fort was triangular. Though the Indians were semi-friendly at first, after Powhatan died things got nasty.

Powhatan had a famous daughter, Pocahontas, aka Matoaka, aka Rebecca Rolfe. Somewhere at the site I remember seeing that her marriage to John Rolfe was her second, with the first husband having an Indian name, but I don't see that in her Wiki entry.

Pocahontas

I do recall thinking that this would have been an interracial marriage. Wiki confirms that it is the first recorded one in American (I assume they mean USofA) history.

Too bad that Pocahontas had to catch some disease and die in England, before she could return home.

There's a museum at Jamestowne that has a lot of bits and pieces of Jamestowne life, as well as a reconstructed face for Jane that makes one feel more than a little queasy, as she's depicted so bright and healthy.

Now I'm off to Jamestown (no extra "e") Settlement, just down the road. It's got a huge building with all kinds of info and mini-movies realating to various aspects of Jamestown life. There's a really nice juxtaposition of exhibits on life in Elizabethan England, Powhatan Virginia, and Western Africa. They really are trying to showcase Jamestown as the confluence of three different cultures from three different continents.

They have stunning life-size statues of Powhatan and African leaders who have direct ties to Jamestown.

Luckily I explored the outside first, while the sun was out. They have a Powhatan village set up with costumed inhabitants patiently explaining crafts like fletching to little girls.

Here you'll also find a reproduction of how the fort at Jamestowne might have looked, reconstructed. There's a blacksmith shop and other things to learn from. The living quarters have clay —not dirt—floors. Cool. The guide there gave me the names of two books about historical cleanliness and such, since I was asking questions about it. How nice that the guides—all of 'em, it seems—know so much about so many aspects of life back then!

Down at the docks you'll find four ships, equipped with crew who are delighted to explain things.

The "big movie" inside the main center was interesting enough, as again, they were focused on three cultures. Their historical African "star" (the person they focused on) was a woman who had originally been a prisoner of war, given to the Portuguese as a slave, and then had her slave ship hijacked in the Caribbean by the English—using the same ship that had carried Pocahontas to England, as a matter of fact. The slaves were brought to Jamestowne to be the first 20 Africans brought to the British New World. The woman was listed as having survived many years later, though records weren't clear as to whether she'd been freed at some point or not.

Coming out of the movie I noticed they'd added a noisy waterfall soundtrack to the Powhatan exhibit. Then I saw some windows. The sky had opened up. Williamsburg and vicinity got more than 4 inches of rain that afternoon. (Plus Yorktown got a tornado, I think.) It was bad enough that I got myself to run when I saw the bus pulling up to the stop, so far from the center's entrance.

Though it said it was the Colonial Williamsburg shuttle, it wasn't the real Colonial Williamsburg shuttle, but another one. Even so, the driver took pity on the eight or so of us and sat there waiting for the real shuttle to show. Thank you!!!

So the real shuttle arrives and we take off down the Colonial Parkway through the storm. The driver paused at the edge of the Jamestown property to talk on the radio. He kept talking as we made the journey back. I heard "One foot deep," and so we all tried listening in. The bus was spewing great fountains of water to either side as we sped through the lush swamps.

At one point he stopped again, but opposite traffic also stopped. A large flock of ducks (babies included) had decided they wanted to cross the road. So cute! And there were so many ducks! A few decided they liked the side they were on.

Then we approached a tunnel and the driver stopped. We watched a gray car stopped in the road, just coming out of the tunnel in the opposite direction. Then a pickup drove out, swooshing through the water around the car. A tiny red car followed, with us taking bets as to whether it would make it. It did. But Gray Car sat there, its blinkers on.

Our driver was having many conversations on his radio. We learned that the cops had stopped traffic on the other end of the tunnel. Traffic inside was turning around.

Then our end of the tunnel lit up with red and blue flashing lights. The police! But it was both police and park rangers (the Parkway is part of the Federal Parks system) who pushed the gray car out. The cop was a pretty hefty guy, so I was impressed. As you can see, the water was darned deep. The cop said that that was actually the shallow side; the other side was waist deep.

A drain did away with the worst part of it fairly quickly, but someone had not put the drain at the road's lowest point, and so knee-deep was where things stayed as long as we were there.

The gray car now out of the water, the driver's side door opened and—waterfall! Water POURED out of the car. I'm ashamed to say that we were greatly entertained. One guy on the bus began to go on and on about how much it would take to fix that car, which switches needed to be replaced, etc.

"That car's toast," I countered.

A guy from the back hollered, "Nobody buy a used gray Lexus from a Williamsburg dealer!"

We got more chuckles as one of the cops leaned over and began scooping more water out of the car's interior. Bad us.

Big Cop came to the bus and helped us back down the Parkway. Turns out we weren't that far from Coll. Williamsburg. Figured I was already as drenched as I could get, and so caught the local shuttle to the Dog Street Pub, where I'd been told I could get the area's best hamburger. It was indeed, and would have been a very nice experience if the waiter hadn't been so condescending.

On the shuttle back to the Visitors' Center, we tried to convince the driver that he wanted to deliver us to our cars. He didn't buy it, darn it. So with lightning crackling right above, I duck-ran to my car, sitting so lonely at the very farthest reaches of the lot.

Friday: On the way out of town, I stopped at the Visitors' Center to take some quick shots of the landscaping that I want to copy. The camera's battery was dead. I reached into my purse for the replacement batteries, discovered that they were rechargables that hadn't been charged before packaging, and delivered a deadly curse to a certain clerk at Radio Shack. Bad, bad me. Luckily, I have a backup camera in my purse.

Farewell, Colonial Williamsburg. I have seen as much of you as I wanted to. I do want to go back for three days to finish Washington, DC, though. Next time I'll take the train and maybe stay at the Alexandria Hilton, which is right across the street from the Metro. One day for one side of the Mall, one day for the other, and one for Mt. Vernon. That sounds easy enough on the footsies.

I'm taking real, prescribed medications now, but recovery seems to be slow. All Williamsburg/Jamestown seemed to be coughing on Thursday. Thank goodness it happened on vacay, right? Not on a work day when it would have interfered with something important.

So: Have you visited any of these places? What stuff did you like best? Not like? What did you miss that you feel you need to go back for?