Some of you may know this already but my darling Shelly was born in Bermuda, the eldest child of a young Air Force enlisted man and his wife. She lived there in two different residences for three years but has not been back since -- until this past week.
You may also know that I work outside quite a bit and commute on crappy winter roads great distances. I barely got through last winter without losing my mind and so we promised ourselves that not only was I going to get a break from winter, we were going to do it in Bermuda.
We had an absolutely fabulous time. I fell in love with the place. She was already in love with it...she just didn't know it until she got there. You could see how strong the connection was for her. We were able to find one of the houses she lived in. We will be returning.
I'm not a beach and sand, lay in the sun kinda of person but there's plenty, plenty to do there for history, culture, architecture and foodie buffs like me, plus there's a couple lighthouses, which you know we love, and the caverns.
If you haven't already, please click through the pictures and fall in love with it too. Don't skip the video of the town crier and then one of me helping to dunk the nag. What great fun.
Our Bermuda photos
The above link is to the Facebook photo album, which is supposed to be able to be seen by anyone, even if you don't have a Facebook account. RJ, let me know if you can't view this album and I'll post them all on here as well
Apparently the vids are not within that album. So I've uploaded them to YouTube
Having issues getting the other one posted here because I didn't take it. I'll post this now and then post an update with the other video.
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Sunday, March 08, 2015
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Downeast
If you've been following my travelogues, you know that what has precipitated some of these trips around Maine is that we (Shelly and I) picked up a State Park Passport, a little booklet that has the State Parks divided by regions of the State with a place to get each park stamped when you visit. You may also know that Shelly loves lighthouses...in fact, has a tattoo on her foot of the West Quoddy Light, even though she'd never seen it in person.
Well, there are five State Parks in what is referred to as Downeast Maine. So we decided to make a weekend of collecting those five and visit some lighthouses and Campobello (you've heard of Campobello, right?) So we packed our real passports, made reservations at a B&B in Lubec for Saturday night and headed out.
I'll start at the end first: On the way home Sunday we had planned on visiting the last two State Parks near Machias and taking a quick detour to Prospect Harbor and Winter Harbor to see another lighthouse. Well, there's also a lighthouse on a little island just offshore in Cutler. So I decided to take the scenic route to Machias via Cutler to see if we might be able to see that lighthouse from the shore. Unfortunately, I ran over something that cut a tire, which cut the rest of our weekend off right there. So we'll have to go back down there again. No bigs since Shel would like to go whale watching anyway.
So I'm just going to write a quick outline of our tour and post a shitload of pictures in the order they were taken. Our first stop was at Cobscook State Park in Dennysville on the western shore of Cobscook Bay. Nice spot for camping and I took a couple pictures there...nothing too spectacular. Then on to Shackford Head State Park in Eastport. We hiked a half mile to the head and took a few pictures with a nice shot of Lubec across the bay. Eastport and Lubec are about three miles apart as the crow flies across the bay but 35 miles apart by car. I took a few pictures in Eastport and we had lunch at The Happy Crab...the best lobster rolls ever.
Then back around the loop through Dennysville to get to Lubec and cross the international bridge onto Campobello Island, New Brunswick. There's a lighthouse, Mulholland Light, just on the other side of the bridge where you can look back at the village of Lubec across the channel. There's also a little lighthouse right in the channel, the Lubec Channel Light aka The Sparkplug. It's a caisson style lighthouse and you'll see a couple of distant pictures of it.
We hustled to the other end of the island because to get to see East Quoddy Headlight aka East Harbour Light, you need to go at low tide because at high tide it sits on an island and you can't walk to it. This is the Bay of Fundy, where tides change by 20 feet. You'll see from the pictures what an excursion it was to get to what is arguably the prettiest lighthouse you'll ever see. You'll see pictures not only of the lighthouse but also of all the ladders, staircases, bridge and rocks you have to navigate. Every picture of a staircase is a different staircase.
Then we headed back toward Lubec, stopping for a tour of FDR's family summer "cottage." Lots of history there and well worth a trip. We then checked into our B&B and went to the village to find some grub.
The next morning we went to West Quoddy Lighthouse and walked a trail along the cliff shore. You'll get a good perspective of the rocky coast of Maine and you can see the Island of Grand Manan, NB in the background. (Maybe another trip?) You already know what happened after that. I hope you enjoy these pictures. Make sure you click into them to really appreciate how beautiful this area at the easternmost area of the United States really is.
You'll have to click the following page break to get to the pictures.
Well, there are five State Parks in what is referred to as Downeast Maine. So we decided to make a weekend of collecting those five and visit some lighthouses and Campobello (you've heard of Campobello, right?) So we packed our real passports, made reservations at a B&B in Lubec for Saturday night and headed out.
I'll start at the end first: On the way home Sunday we had planned on visiting the last two State Parks near Machias and taking a quick detour to Prospect Harbor and Winter Harbor to see another lighthouse. Well, there's also a lighthouse on a little island just offshore in Cutler. So I decided to take the scenic route to Machias via Cutler to see if we might be able to see that lighthouse from the shore. Unfortunately, I ran over something that cut a tire, which cut the rest of our weekend off right there. So we'll have to go back down there again. No bigs since Shel would like to go whale watching anyway.
So I'm just going to write a quick outline of our tour and post a shitload of pictures in the order they were taken. Our first stop was at Cobscook State Park in Dennysville on the western shore of Cobscook Bay. Nice spot for camping and I took a couple pictures there...nothing too spectacular. Then on to Shackford Head State Park in Eastport. We hiked a half mile to the head and took a few pictures with a nice shot of Lubec across the bay. Eastport and Lubec are about three miles apart as the crow flies across the bay but 35 miles apart by car. I took a few pictures in Eastport and we had lunch at The Happy Crab...the best lobster rolls ever.
Then back around the loop through Dennysville to get to Lubec and cross the international bridge onto Campobello Island, New Brunswick. There's a lighthouse, Mulholland Light, just on the other side of the bridge where you can look back at the village of Lubec across the channel. There's also a little lighthouse right in the channel, the Lubec Channel Light aka The Sparkplug. It's a caisson style lighthouse and you'll see a couple of distant pictures of it.
We hustled to the other end of the island because to get to see East Quoddy Headlight aka East Harbour Light, you need to go at low tide because at high tide it sits on an island and you can't walk to it. This is the Bay of Fundy, where tides change by 20 feet. You'll see from the pictures what an excursion it was to get to what is arguably the prettiest lighthouse you'll ever see. You'll see pictures not only of the lighthouse but also of all the ladders, staircases, bridge and rocks you have to navigate. Every picture of a staircase is a different staircase.
Then we headed back toward Lubec, stopping for a tour of FDR's family summer "cottage." Lots of history there and well worth a trip. We then checked into our B&B and went to the village to find some grub.
The next morning we went to West Quoddy Lighthouse and walked a trail along the cliff shore. You'll get a good perspective of the rocky coast of Maine and you can see the Island of Grand Manan, NB in the background. (Maybe another trip?) You already know what happened after that. I hope you enjoy these pictures. Make sure you click into them to really appreciate how beautiful this area at the easternmost area of the United States really is.
You'll have to click the following page break to get to the pictures.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Happy birthday to me
Spent a nice day with my sweetie doing a little sightseeing, checking another park off our State Park Passport and getting beat at putt putt golf (by just one stroke). Now watching some Nascar and relaxing. Hope you have a great August 18 also and enjoy the pictures.
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| Old Fort Halifax in Winslow |
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| Bridge plate and look at the Sebasticook River as it meets the Kennebec River |
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| Train tressel across the Sebasticook |
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| Fort Halifax from the train tressel |
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| Across the Kennebec to the old Hathaway shirt factory |
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| Closer shot with the Waterville/Winslow bridge on the right. Can also see the rapids and another train tressel |
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Texas with the boys
As many of you know, a very good friend and his family moved from NH to TX a year ago. This late winter he sent an email to four of us asking that since the Red Sox would be in Arlington the first weekend in May, how would we feel about coming down for that weekend. All four of us immediately said we were in.
There's a fair bit to tell but I don't want to bore y'all, so I'll try to summarize the highlights as briefly as possible. I need to start out by telling you that I personally had not flown since returning home from SoCal in 1988, partly due to my love of roadtrips and in equal measure since they banned smoking on airplanes but I wasn't going to miss this get-together and I couldn't roadtrip it with my limited time off in my "new" job. It's not that you have to go without a smoke for a 5 hour trip; it's that you need to add in the time to get through security before boarding and add in the layover since the vast majority of airports these days don't have a smoking area. So Ell and I get to Portland on time, get through security pretty smoothly (though he forgot he had a saline bottle in his bag LOL) and were off to wait to board the flight to Chicago. Well, we noticed one big band of nasty weather in the Midwest and soon heard that our flight was delayed, followed shortly by the announcement that we wouldn't make our connecting flight in Chicago to Dallas (nice way to help the smoker deal with his addiction!) So we got on the plane and were told they'd take our info and get us rerouted. When we landed in Chicago (a nonsmoking airport), folks lined up to try to get info about our leg to Dallas but we noticed that the screens were saying that flight hadn't left yet and we had plenty of time to get on it. So we made the decision to hustle way over to where that flight was board and made it in plenty of time. Luckily for us they had never taken us off that flight. End of airport and smoking stories...suffice to say I'm proud of how well I handled it.
We arrived in Dallas around the same time that TJS did and soon found AA and my brother who were there to pick us up. We proceeded to Ranch AA, after a short stop at Tom Thumb for critical supplies, where we commenced to catch up, drink and eat lots of cow and pig. AA grilled us some awesome burgers for a late lunch and we then awaited the brisket and pulled pork he'd been smoking all day. Man, was it worth the wait. Forgot to mention that we flew on Friday and the game was scheduled for Saturday night.
Saturday we had a relaxing morning and then struck out for Grapevine to eat some real Texas chili at a place AA was familiar with (hopefully the name will come to me as I write.) Grapevine is a tourist town, for lack of a better description, a town that's maintained it's old Texas downtown look and is littered with little artist shops and restaurants. Stevie Ray Vaughn played at the chili place when he was still a teen. I can't begin to tell you how good that chili was. "Real Texas chili" doesn't have any tomato base or beans, though beans are an option. It's just meat and spices. Good time to share a few pics I took in Grapevine. Tolbert's!
The next leg of our journey was on to the ballgame, Red Sox at Rangers at the Ballpark in Arlington. I've already written about that on BoSox Tavern. So I won't bore you with that again. If you haven't read that, you go do so through this link where you'll find a write-up and pictures. What you won't see in that piece is that after watching the Bruins/Leafs game on the DVR and all the sissies had gone to bed, AA and I stayed up all night drinking, talking movies and watching "Django Unchained," which I enjoyed more than I thought I would.
Now on to Sunday, our last day there since we were all flying out Monday morning. Our tee times at Champions Golf Club in Justin were for 9:00, which came really early for yours truly who got only a little over an hours sleep thanks to the above-mentioned night in AA's House of Pain. I had been dreading the golf to some extent because I don't play nearly often enough to play well enough to enjoy it. Well, I'm very glad I went. The course was pretty forgiving and I played well enough to have a very good time. Bro, myself and Ell played in a threesome and TJS and AA played with a couple of AA's new friends in a foursome right behind us. I'd share my scorecard but I didn't play THAT well. After an adult beverage at the 19th hole, we went back to AA's to relax for a bit before we struck out on the final leg of an awesome weekend.
We had reservations for 6:00 at the famous H3 Ranch Steakhouse in the old Stockyard area of Fort Worth but we left early enough to look around the stockyard area and have a drink at the historic White Elephant Saloon, where I took a picture and bought a cool-looking t-shirt. I'll let you decide whether to click the links to learn more about these cool places.
But it's the first time I've smoked inside a public place in many years -- had to have one just for old time's sake -- and we learned about the history of the saloon and took in lots of eye candy. Then it was on to H3, where we actually ended up eating in the saloon side called Booger Red's, where you'll see a much better picture of the place than the one I took. At the link you can better see the critters on the wall. I'll tell you, we ate lots and lots of cow at H3, yours truly and one other having rib-eye and the others porterhouse. Throw on top of that a couple of awesome appetizers and goblets of grog and we left well satiated.
With full bellies and having run almost nonstop for 3 days, we were mostly too pooped to do much more than go back to AA's, get to bed and get up early to catch our flights out. I can tell you that we'll have to do this again real soon...maybe Bruins at Stars this time?
There's a fair bit to tell but I don't want to bore y'all, so I'll try to summarize the highlights as briefly as possible. I need to start out by telling you that I personally had not flown since returning home from SoCal in 1988, partly due to my love of roadtrips and in equal measure since they banned smoking on airplanes but I wasn't going to miss this get-together and I couldn't roadtrip it with my limited time off in my "new" job. It's not that you have to go without a smoke for a 5 hour trip; it's that you need to add in the time to get through security before boarding and add in the layover since the vast majority of airports these days don't have a smoking area. So Ell and I get to Portland on time, get through security pretty smoothly (though he forgot he had a saline bottle in his bag LOL) and were off to wait to board the flight to Chicago. Well, we noticed one big band of nasty weather in the Midwest and soon heard that our flight was delayed, followed shortly by the announcement that we wouldn't make our connecting flight in Chicago to Dallas (nice way to help the smoker deal with his addiction!) So we got on the plane and were told they'd take our info and get us rerouted. When we landed in Chicago (a nonsmoking airport), folks lined up to try to get info about our leg to Dallas but we noticed that the screens were saying that flight hadn't left yet and we had plenty of time to get on it. So we made the decision to hustle way over to where that flight was board and made it in plenty of time. Luckily for us they had never taken us off that flight. End of airport and smoking stories...suffice to say I'm proud of how well I handled it.
We arrived in Dallas around the same time that TJS did and soon found AA and my brother who were there to pick us up. We proceeded to Ranch AA, after a short stop at Tom Thumb for critical supplies, where we commenced to catch up, drink and eat lots of cow and pig. AA grilled us some awesome burgers for a late lunch and we then awaited the brisket and pulled pork he'd been smoking all day. Man, was it worth the wait. Forgot to mention that we flew on Friday and the game was scheduled for Saturday night.
Saturday we had a relaxing morning and then struck out for Grapevine to eat some real Texas chili at a place AA was familiar with (hopefully the name will come to me as I write.) Grapevine is a tourist town, for lack of a better description, a town that's maintained it's old Texas downtown look and is littered with little artist shops and restaurants. Stevie Ray Vaughn played at the chili place when he was still a teen. I can't begin to tell you how good that chili was. "Real Texas chili" doesn't have any tomato base or beans, though beans are an option. It's just meat and spices. Good time to share a few pics I took in Grapevine. Tolbert's!
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| TJS searching for espresso |
Now on to Sunday, our last day there since we were all flying out Monday morning. Our tee times at Champions Golf Club in Justin were for 9:00, which came really early for yours truly who got only a little over an hours sleep thanks to the above-mentioned night in AA's House of Pain. I had been dreading the golf to some extent because I don't play nearly often enough to play well enough to enjoy it. Well, I'm very glad I went. The course was pretty forgiving and I played well enough to have a very good time. Bro, myself and Ell played in a threesome and TJS and AA played with a couple of AA's new friends in a foursome right behind us. I'd share my scorecard but I didn't play THAT well. After an adult beverage at the 19th hole, we went back to AA's to relax for a bit before we struck out on the final leg of an awesome weekend.
We had reservations for 6:00 at the famous H3 Ranch Steakhouse in the old Stockyard area of Fort Worth but we left early enough to look around the stockyard area and have a drink at the historic White Elephant Saloon, where I took a picture and bought a cool-looking t-shirt. I'll let you decide whether to click the links to learn more about these cool places.
But it's the first time I've smoked inside a public place in many years -- had to have one just for old time's sake -- and we learned about the history of the saloon and took in lots of eye candy. Then it was on to H3, where we actually ended up eating in the saloon side called Booger Red's, where you'll see a much better picture of the place than the one I took. At the link you can better see the critters on the wall. I'll tell you, we ate lots and lots of cow at H3, yours truly and one other having rib-eye and the others porterhouse. Throw on top of that a couple of awesome appetizers and goblets of grog and we left well satiated.
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