Dan and Hannah bike North Haven Island on the Coast of Maine

After the summer tourist season, Hannah and I take to the open road (You might think we have a Harley?  We don’t.  We have very sensible, fuel efficient Hyundai Elantra.).   On a Friday in early September Hannah and I drive north on the Maine Turnpike, then Route One to make the 930A ferry at Rockland, some two and a quarter hours from home.  Passing through the coastal towns of Bath, Woolwich, and Wiscasset, we see pottery stores, antiques shops, small farms, marshland, u-store it garages, forests, and roadside stands such as Beth’s Berries and Sweet Corn.  The most annoying are the Mainely signs – Mainely Sewing, Mainely Poultry.  There is no romance in biking this coastal highway for the shoulder is the white line on the side of the road.

Pulling into the parking lot at the Maine State Ferry Service terminal in Rockland, we pay $10 to park, which turns out is a mistake since free parking on the side streets of Rockland during the day is easy and close by.  At the ticket counter we learn that for a 1h 15m ferry ride to North Haven we are charged $17.50 for each round trip.   Fair enough.  Then we are told our bikes are $16.50 each round trip!  What part of a green initiative do they not understand!  The bill is $68.  To take a car with a driver and a passenger is only $67!  Alas, without a reservation for a car, there would be no room on the ferry today.  The North Haven ferry just has places for 17 cars and today a semi-tractor trailer taking food to the island grocery store takes up five of those spots.

Out on the open waters we are enveloped by fog that just as quickly dissipates.  The North Haven ferry has stiff plastic commercial benches inside on the first floor and white painted metal benches up top in the open air.  We opt for the latter and are pleasantly “trapped” for an hour with time to read and write without distraction.  As we enter the North Haven harbor we pass by lobster buoys, lobster boats, and pleasure boats anchored in front of houses with wide lawns to the shore.

North Haven, twelve miles long and three miles wide, is an island of a manageable size with gently rolling hills that you can almost totally explore in a day of biking.  Rather than the steep up and downs found near Boothbay Harbor or on Islesboro, a coastal island twenty miles north of North Haven, the roads make for easy conversation.  We head inland on Main Street past modest houses, many of which have Direct TV dishes.  What does one do here in the winter?  immediately comes to my mind.  On paved roads, we find little traffic on this September Friday so we can ride side by side.  We are told 3000 people live here in the summer while there are 370 fulltime residents, who do have their own school (North Haven Community School – http://www.northhavencommunityschool.org).  We have been transported into 1950s Maine and couldn’t be happier.  The school closes at noon Fridays to give anyone the chance to get the last ferry (345P) to the mainland.

Off Shore Road, Mullins Head, the town park, is one mile away on a dirt road to a clearing among farms with two beaten and weathered picnic tables.  It looks as if no one has been here in a month.  It’s ideal.  We feel like teenagers and have the place to ourselves.  Back on the circumnavigating road we head north to North Shore Road with its view of channel islands.  Rarely do we see a car; in fact it’s mostly islanders in trucks who give us a wide berth as they pass. 

We learn of Ames Knob, a 152 foot peak on the island.  Nearly back to the dock in town, we turn onto Ames Point Road, take a weathered grassy trail through the field on the right, tromp through some thickets, then along a brief rocky trail to a stony summit.  It’s a 360 degree view and we easily spot the controversial wind turbines just across the bay on Vinalhaven Island, maybe two or three miles away.  Two of the three monstrous turbines (263 feet in height) spin regularly and provide all the electrical power for North Haven and the larger Vinalhaven.  What I see as unsightly, Hannah sees as appealing.   We are told by summer residents that it’s the whirring sound within a mile of the turbines that’s the major complaint. (http://www.nrcm.org/Vinalhaven_wind.asp).  We will certainly explore Vinalhaven next year to see for ourselves.

As we wait to board the ferry after 30 miles of leisurely biking, we talk with a spunky woman in her 70s who was actually born on North Haven.  I ask her what does one do in the winter.  She says, Nothing.  I go to the mainland from October to April.  We leave a delightful island on a human scale. 

Hannah and I settle upstairs on the North Haven ferry and know how lucky we are.   Life is good.

Dan and Hannah hike the Long Trail near Jeffersonville, Vermont

Having come to Jeffersonville in northern Vermont for the marriage of Jerrod and Danielle, friends of our son Will, we stay at Nye’s Green Valley Farm B & B.  Many of you may not know that Hannah was a B & B Innkeeper in the late 1980s for two rooms above our carriage house (well, truth be told it was our garage).  But this was our very first time staying in a     B & B ourselves.  For $95 per night we had a king-bedded (love the language!) room with a private bath and an all-you-can-eat breakfast (Thru hikers are always looking for AYCE meals!).  The room was spacious and included 10,000 stations of Direct TV.  The breakfast included fresh fruit, blueberry pancakes made with applesauce, Vermont maple syrup, and scrambled eggs.  I had four pancakes each morning without thinking myself a pig.  I delude myself often. With a trailhead on Route 15 just two miles from the B & B, the Long Trail predates much of the Appalachian Trail.  Built by the Green Mountain Club between 1910 and 1930, the Long Trail follows the main ridge of the Green Mountains from the Massachusetts-Vermont line to the Canadian border as it crosses Vermont's highest peaks. It was the inspiration for the Appalachian Trail, which coincides with it for one hundred miles in the southern third of the state…The Long trail is 273 miles long.   (http://www.greenmountainclub.org). Though the weekend was to be stormy, we set out to hike a little after 9 AM knowing, or thinking we knew, that storms are predicted for the afternoon.  As we hike .4 of a mile to the Lamoille River, we see a white blaze directing us across the river plain.  We step on rocks and see where plants had been flattened by the rushing waters of the past week due to Hurricane Irene.  Stunned to see how high the water had been, today we are able to negotiate much of the river basin on foot.  Over the river itself is a 100 foot pedestrian cable suspension bridge which can handle any storms.  But the river plain is much wider and it appears that this area had been under ten plus feet of water. We soon cross a road, and not 50 feet away to the left, we pick up the white blaze trail.  The trail is sweet dirt and easy on the feet.  In the space of 1.4 miles to Prospect Rock we will climb 1000 feet of vertical elevation.  Prospect Rock offers panoramic views of forested peaks with farm land along the Lamoille River Valley.  We hear the first distant rumbles of thunder.  We dismiss it as a passing storm since it’s not supposed to rain till the afternoon. We do lose the trail momentarily.  Alas, these major trails (AT and LT) are so well-marked that if you don’t see a white blaze for 100 or 200 feet, just retrace your steps until you see the last white blaze.  In this case, we missed a double white blaze that means a turn in the trail.  Having taken less than hour to get to Prospect Rock and since the thunder is in the distance, we decide to hike another 40 minutes to get a full three hours of round-trip hiking.  Hearing a little more rumbling, we pass a trailhead with parked cars, take the road for 500 feet, then to the left to a well-marked trail that again climbs yet another mountain.  Ferns and small oaks surround the trail as we ascend.  Rumbles of thunder are not so distant and a blow down (a tree crossing the trail blown down by the recent hurricane) seems like a good turn-around point.  On this muggy morning, my Under Armour tee-shirt clings to my body.  The humidity in the forest is extreme.  We meet Bob, a Long Trail thru-hiker, who tells us he’s just 50 miles from Canada.  He’s ditched his tent and can stay in shelters the rest of the way.  Young hikers with their texting at shelters bug him and compromise the wilderness experience.  And then we all feel the first rain drops.   We double time it back under the oak and pine canopy of the forest.  The thunder is loud and the rain picks up in intensity.  With Hannah in the lead, we are making excellent time, but we can’t outrun Mother Nature’s deluge.  Soon every part of us is drenched.  Putting my cell phone and Hannah’s camera in plastic bags to protect them, we are resigned to have everything else be wet.  Rather than huddle under trees, which doesn’t seem too bright in a thunderstorm, we just keep moving.     As quickly as it begins, the storm ends 25 minutes later and the sun reappears.   We are a mere half mile from our car and then a two mile drive to our B & B for showers and dry clothes.  We’ll nap, soon drive to the wedding, and watch our son Will give a heartfelt toast to one of the cutest couples you will ever see, Jerrod and Danielle. As always when hiking, know thyself, thy limits, and the conditions.  Be prepared and check the forecast a little better than we did.

Dan and Hannah have a party for Sadie, our new Cat (It’s not as pathetic as it sounds.)

A major theme of the Boots (our missing cat) series on my blog was my pining for a neighborhood that was truly a community.  My laments and embarrassments of not knowing my neighbors were woven throughout my postings.   (Perhaps, you wondered if I had any cheese with my whine?)  Our minister Marlayna then suggested that Hannah and I have a neighborhood party to celebrate the new feline in our lives and get our neighbors together.   She threw down the gauntlet and I had no place to hide. 

We created the invitation below that I hand-delivered to some 35 neighbors.

Neighborhood Gathering for Sadie

At Hannah and Dan’s Place

At 162 Chases Pond Road

Saturday, October 8, 2011 from 3-5 PM

You may be aware that we lost our cat Boots a year ago.  Another black cat with four white paws made multiple appearances in our yard this past September and led us down the path thinking that this cat was our long lost Boots.  With the use of a Super Zoom lens on Photoshop that recreated the faces at 10,000 megapixels, we definitely learned that this cat was not our Boots.   On the plus side during our hunt for Boots, we met more and more of our neighbors. 

On September 24, we adopted a new cat from the Another Chance Animal Rescue in North Berwick.  Sadie is a six-month-old brown and white tiger and Maine coon kitten who was abandoned in an apartment when renters moved out.


To celebrate Sadie joining the Rothermel family and to take the opportunity to establish ours as a neighborhood of neighbors, we'd like to invite you to our house to meet Sadie and begin to get to know one another.  If you are so inclined, please bring an appetizer/hors d'oeuvre to share.  We will provide beverages.

Please confirm with Dan or Hannah

We believe that pot luck-type get-togethers are sane alternatives to the hostess and host doing it all!  Who has the time or the inclination (or courage!) to cook for 30+!  If food prep is shared, it will be more likely that such gatherings and parties will happen.  


In addition to our local neighbors, we saw this party as a chance to invite some of our local friends, too.  Hoping for a big crowd, my expectations were tempered by that fact that this date was a busy Saturday of Columbus Day weekend with soccer games, home repairs, weddings, and visits to family in- and out-of-state.   The good news is that fourteen very cool friends and neighbors came to the party.  Thanks to some inspiration from that very morning, I have a new approach when thinking about the numbers who come to a party.

Earlier that Saturday morning, Hannah and I had been at workshop, Create the Life You Love by Willow Femmechild as a part of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute based at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine.  (They are the next generation of elder hostels for those over 50 - http://usm.maine.edu/olli.)  As we began our four-hour, one-day course, Willow said something that resonated with me and that subsequently applied to our Sadie Party.

All the people who were meant to be here are here.

Later Hannah put it in her words, Everyone was where they needed to be.

And let me say that Sadie was in her glory.  She preened for over 100 pictures that were taken by our friend Connie.  Sadie mixed with the guests, sat on laps, stretched, and played with her presents of cat toys and catnip.  It was a glorious Saturday afternoon.

Dan and Hannah hike Velvet Rocks on the Appalachian Trail in Hanover, NH

Out of the blue, Hannah and I are invited to a wedding in northern Vermont.  Jumping at the chance, we book a B and B (Nye’s Green Valley Farm (http://www.nyesgreenvalleyfarm.com/) and look for some hiking on the AT, which crosses into NH at Hanover.  Entirely Interstates, it’s an easy two hour ride, from the Maine Seacoast to this college town (Dartmouth).  Exiting I-89, we take Route 120 for 3-4 miles towards town to the famous Coop Food Store, with its ample parking lot for day hikers.  We find restrooms at The Coop Service station adjacent to the parking lot.

As we prepare to hike, I realize I’ve forgotten my hiking hat.  This is a fashion faux pas of the highest order (i.e., for an AT wannabe!).  It’s a gorgeous 75 degrees and I, again for about the 10,000^th time think, I could live here.  I’ve felt this way in Missoula, MT and Pocatello, ID and Flagstaff, AZ.  A college community vibe with a focus on fitness.  A funky, community-oriented coop food store.  College sports and culture.  Ah, to be retired and in love with the myth of living in a college town.

Beginning at the far side of the Dartmouth College soccer field, we immediately ascend into the forest of the nearby mountain.  New Hampshire and as we’ll soon learn about Vermont, are all about the vertical.   We climb more than hike.  At the trailhead, there is a caution about tough going due to Hurricane Irene.  With white blazes (identifying the main trail) marking the way, we step higher and higher on rocky, root-crossed trails.  Seven tenths of a mile into our hike, in search of thru-hikers to chat up, we take a blue blaze trail (side trail) to the Velvet Rocks shelter.  Wood framed, three-sided with a clear Plexiglas roof, 10’ x 12’, with sleeping for six, it’s clean and just five years old. 

This part of the trail is cared for by the Dartmouth Outing Club (DOC) (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~doc/).  Alas there are no thru-hikers so we move on.  Back at the main trail, we see a sign to Trescott Road three miles away, which will give us four hours of hiking there and back.  Nigh perfect for us.

Among the pines and beeches, we climb.  A thru-hiker roars by us.  We don’t even get a trail name nor have a chance to offer him a granola bar.  Then we find a knotted rope tied to a tree some 25 feet ahead, leading us up a steep, rocky climb.  It’s very cool.  We use the rope to pull ourselves up as if we are stud mountain climbers. 

Bless the DOC.  Near the top, we see 16-18 students, who it turns out, are part of Dartmouth College freshman five-day orientation backpacking experience (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~doc/firstyeartrips/).    They are quiet, but their orientation leader has enough perkiness for them all.  I like her.  In hindsight, I wish I had had such an experience when Hannah and I were freshmen at the College of Wooster in Ohio to be connected right off the bat.

And then, voila, we meet thru-hikers from Canada – “Dacks” (female hiker whose trail name derives from her connections to the Adirondacks) and “Spoons” (male hiker who broke their two spoons on the first days on the trail at Mt. Katahdin).  Since they started hiking in New Brunswick, Canada, they had done 300 miles before they even arrived at Mt. Katahdin to begin the 2179 miles of the AT.  As southbounders, they hoped to be in Georgia by Christmas.  Whoa.  After we part, I wonder about hiking 8-12 hours a day.  Just too much of a good thing for me.  Today’s four hours of hiking seem fine, and then it’s a shower and a glass of vino with Hannah B once we arrive at the B and B.  Later we’ll have the comforts of a king-size bed, not a sleeping bag on a one inch mattress.  Makes me sound pretty soft?   Guilty.

The last mile before Trescott Road is level, through a verdant forest with ferns and small oaks by our feet.   The trail is tree covered the whole way, which makes the muggy 80 degrees tolerable.  Puncheons (planks of wood) take us through a swamp of cat o’ nine tails.   Our conversation gets to conflict and confrontation; dealing with either has not been a strength for me.  I understand that there is conflict that needs to be addressed; but I think my approach to life has been that of finding the common ground with another.  See the good in others.  Pollyanna (1960) would love me (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054195/).  I deserve no applause; I’m just trying to understand myself a little bit more.

“Singing Dave” approaches.  He’s a section hiker, which means he does parts of the AT for a few days or weeks at a time.  He’s been doing it for three years and hopes to do the entire AT over fifteen years.  Sure seems like a sane way to hike the trail.  This time he’s out for a week.  Asked why he does it, he says that it lets his mind take off from his day job as a chemist.  He seems like a happy guy.

Four hours after we start we are back at the Coop parking lot, getting into our sandals, and buying dinner of deli potato salad and bean salad to go on a bed of leafy greens.   Muenster cheese and crackers will go with our evening wine at the B and B.  Got to say, these kids do it right.

As always when hiking, know thyself, thy limits, and the conditions.  Be prepared.   

Dan Hikes Borestone Mountain, Audubon Society Jewel near Monson, Maine

Dan Hikes Borestone Mountain, Audubon Society Jewel near Monson, Maine

Monson, Maine is one of the great Appalachian Trail towns.  With boarding houses such as Shaw’s and the Lakehouse, Monson is the final destination before northbound thru-hikers tackle the 100-mile Wilderness (a stretch of hiking with almost no services for 100 miles prior to getting to Mount Katahdin and the end of the AT).     

On the way to Monson, we see the first potato fields and people living a hardscrabble existence.  We pass Lews Guns in Corinna.  We are not in Kansas anymore.  Used auto parts stores seem to be the business of choice, catering to a world of snowmobilers, four wheelers, and beaten-down cars.   We stop at Aunt DD’s in Guilford for the pancakes (3 monster blueberry ones for $4.50 or the biscuits, gravy, and sausage for $4.95.)  You can have a real Maine breakfast side dish of baked beans if you like.  Baked beans at 8A!  It’s the kind of place where I love to over tip the waitress, who tells us her sixth grade class hiked Borestone Mountain, our hike of choice today.

After three hours of driving, my hiking buddy Paul and I take the Elliotsville Road to the right just north of Monson, traveling eight miles on a winding road through the Maine forest.  The trailhead has space for 8-10 cars; then we are placed in the very capable hands of the Audubon Society.  For this hike of two miles up and two miles down, the Maine Guidebook says it’s a three hour hike because the rise in elevation is 1900+ feet.  In the first mile we climb 1000 feet over a trail of roots and rocks.  It’s a serious climb and we appreciate any small level stretch.  The trail is incredibly well-marked with bright fluorescent green blazes (triangles).  There are stairways of stone placed by people akin to Italian stone masons.   They are exquisite.  We pass a Clivus Multrum (http://www.clivus.com/) biodegradable outhouse that uses no water or chemicals and composts the waste.  Nearby are bass wood leaves, nature’s toilet paper, which we don’t need.

Arriving at eleven acre Sunrise Pond (which is connected to Midday and Sunset Ponds), we rest at the dock near the Audubon Society Visitor Center, which displays indigenous animals and birds.  

After we pay $4 each (the honor system), we start the .7 mile trail to the West Peak of Borestone.  Heading right around the lake over puncheons (wood planks over boggy areas) to the far side of the lake, very quickly we climb steeply, though not daunting or overwhelming.  On occasion we grab onto rebars in the mountain, but it’s never perilous.   I’m still impressed those sixth graders made it.  We grab onto rocks to scale the mountain.  Once at the top we’ve done more climbing than hiking.  Dragonflies and turkey vultures that look like hawks greet us.  We have a full 360 degree view to Sebec Lake, Dover-Foxcroft, and Onawa Lake.

On the hike down I am reminded how hiking with another teaches me to slow down in a good way.  And how can you tell if someone is a friend.  They look out for you and what you want to do.   It’s about you and them.  We do have to crawl down parts of the mountain backwards.  We are not spring chickens.   Once back at the Visitor Center, rather than take the steep trail down, we take the gravel road suitable for vehicles down to the trailhead.  We still drop 1000 feet over 1.3 miles.  The entire leisurely three miles takes 3.5 hours. 

Once through with our hike, we park in Monson to feel the AT trail town experience.  We head to Shaw’s Boarding House which can handle up to 25 hikers.  Dawn, the friendly proprietor, welcomes us in and we learn the all-you-can-eat $8 breakfast is served at 7A.  She hopes will come for it the next time we visit.  The upstairs bunk room has seven twin beds while four to five other rooms have double beds, some with television.  Dawn says 99% of the hikers are wonderful and 1% just need to get back on their meds.

Borestone Mountain Trail – Challenging and oh so satisfying.  As always when hiking, know thyself, thy limits, and the conditions.  Be prepared.