fautrever.com

As Garrison Keillor says, “It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegone”. Technically, we were in western Maine but you know what I mean. It was good to have a mellow week as we needed time to catch up on work and plan out our itinerary. Our goal for so long had been to visit Maine, and as we wrapped up our month there, we needed to figure out what to do next. Not that our week was boring, we still found plenty of interesting things to share with you.

Leaving Mount Desert Island we drove right through Bangor which warranted a brief stop. The town’s location straddling the Penobscot River led to its early boom as a timber and ship port. As you can imagine the loggers and sailors made Bangor quite a lively place for many years. Nowadays, Maine’s third largest city seems to be struggling to replace those once profitable jobs. The recently renovated waterfront park was completed with an eye towards drawing tourists. The river that once floated logs to the mills is now famous for rafting, canoeing and kayaking.

We were in town to peek at Stephen King’s house and to visit the Sea Dog Brewery. There was no mistaking King’s mansion high atop a hill looking down towards the river. The spider web design of the front gates, the wrought iron bats and three-headed dragons on the fence posts gave it away. Truly the home of a man who loved the macabre. We half-expected the house to be in disrepair and the door to creakily swing open, with dark shadows flitting behind the dimly lit windows upstairs. Instead it was perfectly maintained with a well-manicured lawn and a silver Mercedes parked in the drive.

A couple of other surprises for you: King and his wife are big supporters of kid-oriented community projects throughout Maine and they own two radio stations: WKIT and WZON. One of the stations is all sports and I have a sneaky suspicion he bought it just so he could listen to the Boston Red Sox games! They say he is a huge fan; in fact, they told us to keep an eye out for a tall (6’3”) man with glasses wearing a Red Sox hat. On our walk around town we never did see him. Of course, we just recently learned that while we were in Bangor he was slinking around bookstores in Australia “vandalizing” books. If you haven’t read the article, you should, it’s really funny!

The walk downhill from the Kings’ to the Brewery took us past a small park that surprised us by being full of homeless people. In my mind Maine, with its intense winters and out-of-the-way location, is the last place I’d want to be if I were homeless—but what do I know about being homeless? From our experience in Tucson, with its mild winters and location along I-10, the homeless population swells in the winter and drops in the hot summer. Then we read that almost 17% of the population in Bangor lives below the poverty line; that’s a pretty high percentage.

Our walk was a warm one and since it was well past lunchtime we ducked into the cool (literally and figuratively) Sea Dog Brewery. From our table we looked right out over the slow and wide Penobscot River. Lance was pleased to find that they had their Blueberry Wheat Ale on draft. We had tried it in the bottle but we feel that beer always tastes better out of the tap. Revived we left and began the long uphill to our RV. From Bangor we didn’t have much further to drive, and don’t worry, I was the DD for the day.

Our RV park near Poland, Maine was located across the street from Range Pond State Park and less than half a mile from the Poland Spring. Now there’s an interesting and controversial story. A man named Ricker settled next to the spring in 1794. He opened a small hotel for travelers and eventually the family began marketing the “curative” properties of the water. Not only did the area turn into a small resort but the family began bottling the spring water. Somehow the family was out of the picture by the 1930s.

Today, the most popular selling bottled water in America, Poland Springs, is owned by Nestle. No longer is the water claimed to be curative just as it no longer comes from only Poland Spring. The water comes from at least six different springs scattered throughout Maine.

Ready for the controversy? It’s the standard big business versus small town interests story that is all too common these days. In one of the communities where Nestle buys spring water to bottle, the town is facing—get the irony in this—a water shortage. The townspeople are pursuing all manner of ways to try to protect “their” water. They have suggested new taxes and gallon limits but the state of Maine is reluctant to approve them since Nestle is such a big company. NestlePoland Springs, a subsidiary of Nestle, a multi-billion dollar company, has said the taxes would send them into bankruptcy. Oh puh-lease!

For the sunny evenings we took advantage of nearby Range Pond. Walking the shoreline we saw hundreds of tiny Pickerel Frogs (Lithobates palustris) hopping around and we kept a close eye on a Common Loon family. The parents are so striking with their black heads and red eyes. What their baby lacked in coloring he made up for in energy, he literally swam circles around his parents. The sound of their haunting calls floated all the way over to our campsite; we fell asleep listening to them talk like they have for millions of years. The lake (it was too big to call a pond) was also home to beautiful purple Pickerel Weed, a favorite food of Moose. We hate to admit it but we still haven’t seen a Moose in all of Maine. Plenty of Moose warning signs though.

On the rainy days we took advantage of the old Ping-Pong table in our RV park’s rec room. The net needed jimmying every time but the game went on. We’re getting pretty good at it now, amazing how playing a silly little game like that can still work up a sweat. Of course, Lance is much better at it than I am, I hate it when he spins the ball! I think I win once in awhile just out of plain stubbornness, I refuse to not try.

A pleasant surprise was a lovely visit with some friends who we knew but didn’t know well enough to know that they lived in the area. Confused? They volunteered at the Arboretum where I worked. We knew they lived in Maine but we had not been in touch since Lance and I went on the road. Thankfully, we are still in touch with Rich and Karen, another couple who also volunteered at the Arboretum, and they did a fine job of hooking us all up by email. John and Marlene were really excited because they had just recently made the decision to go full-time in their RV and sold their home. For a couple that had lived in the same city for over 60 years, it was a big step. We wish Marlene and John safe travels!

Part of the reason we were in western Maine was the geology. The mountains of that area are full of coarse-grained granite called pegmatite. Pegmatites are famous because they often contain pockets of gem quality minerals. The most famous gem in Maine is tourmaline, but smoky quartz, beryl, garnet, mica and aquamarine are also found. Many of the mines are small, private operations that still pull amazing specimens out of the mountains every year. Other places were previously commercially mined for feldspar and other minerals. Some of these old quarries are open to the public for collecting. Our first venture was to the quarries in the Auburn city park on Mt. Apatite. Lance and I found a couple decent specimens of schorl (black tourmaline), some garnets and a few large pieces of muscovite mica, not a bad haul for a couple hours.

For our next outing we stopped first at Perham’s of West Paris. A family run shop, museum and jewelry store, Perham’s has been pulling pretty things out of the ground since 1919. Their displays were astounding, huge quartz crystals and brilliant watermelon (green and pink) tourmaline. Even Lance was impressed and rocks are not really his thing! Perham’s still owns and operates a few quarries in the Mt. Mica area and the best part is that they allow the public to collect at them for free. Finders keepers. They even provided us with a map and clear instructions on how to find the quarries—too cool.

I spent most of a gorgeous sunny, cool day (it felt like Fall, not that I know what Fall is like in Maine) out there pounding and turning over rocks. Lance took it easy since he was feeling a bit under the weather. Again, I didn’t find anything worth selling but I did find a few specimens to be proud of. Besides, they mean more because I found them with my own two hands.

Since I knew I would be mining all day and that mining is dirty business I didn’t take the camera with me and I wish I had. I saw the strangest plant; with its long deep red stalk and bright white berries, it was stunning. I looked it up and learned that Snowberry was first documented by Meriweather Lewis in 1805 in Montana. The berries are slightly poisonous to humans but are the favored food of pheasants, quail and grouse. From what I read it is a native plant in Maine and it is sold as a landscape plant because it is so showy.

All in all it was a lovely, relaxing week. Over the weekend we moved about 60 miles to the west into New Hampshire.

Photos: View our photographs from Western Maine.

Notes: We stayed in Western Maine from 08/11/07 to 08/19/07.