Saturday, July 31, 2010

I Go Where It Smells Interesting and On One Way Streets

Yesterday, I biked out for about an hour.Usually when I venture out, I bike around the same familiar streets, but I decided to change things up yesterday. I was curious about where Garland Street ended, so I biked there first, and then out Essex, which is a very long street which turns rural after awhile. An hour isn't very long to bike, I know, but I'm working on building my endurance for my first day-long bike trip in a few weeks.
Today, I went farther out onto Essex, and then onto a road I'd never seen, called Church Road.
It was very cute, and there was hardly any traffic, which was relaxing, since Essex street can sometimes be a scary ride. There was a small church on the end with a little graveyard attached, which I explored before heading back along Essex.
Pictures:
Where Garland Street Ends
It gets rural pretty fast
Little unattended veggie stands restore my faith in humanity.
The view from Church Road

The cemetery.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Adventures at Four AM

Summer's been flying by, and I'm not sure I'm okay with that.
Slow down, I was just getting to know you!

A couple of my friends and I took a trip to Stockton Springs to see the sunrise a few weeks back.
This involved leaving around four a.m., which we handled surprisingly well.
The way down was extremely foggy. But it was very strange, because at some points it would be so foggy you could hardly see through the windsheild, and then in a few yards, the line of vision would be almost completely clear. It's a very nice drive, though. I forget how cute rural Maine can be.
We arrived just in time to see the sun rise through the heavy fog, which made a nice effect, and we went for a dawn swim.
All-in-all, a very good time.
We also headed over to Sears Island. Half of the island is cold water, like Sandy Point, but then the other half of the island, used often for clamming, is all warm water, because it's where the Penobscot River meets the ocean. There were a few old men out clamming when we got there, but we picked our way over farther on the beach and waded into the ankle deep waters. Much to our surprise, there's a large population of hermit crabs living there! They may have been two different varieties, but I can't be sure. Some of them were large, orange and fuzzy, and then others were smaller and brown. I think though, that the orange ones may have been the males, and the brown the females, because of the way the orange ones were dragging the others around. I'm curious if this is a part of the mating process.I had also never actually seen clamming flats before, or not for a very long time. I was surprised every time I saw a spurt of water. One of them even spurted right underneath my foot! Despite my persistent attempts, I wasn't able to dig any up.
At the end of our trip, we made a pitstop into a curious attraction. We kept seeing signs for the Book Barn Used Bookstore, so we decided to detour and check it out. It's literally a barn in the back of this guy's house. When we walked in, I almost fell over. The inside of the barn resembled a labyrinth. There were shelves of books up to the ceiling, and piles of books on the floor up to my waist. The entire barn was full of it. The owner sat at his desk and made small chat with customers- but I never actually saw anything except for the smoke from his pipe, because he was obscured by the many mountains of books surrounding the desk. I encourage everyone to go to this place if they ever get the chance. I could have stayed in there forever.