Tag Archives: fall foliage

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Autumn leaves and antiques.

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Another beautiful fall day called for another scenic drive.

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I’m sorry, but autumn in New England is hard to beat.

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The air is crisp and the trees give us a splendid tableau of color.

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It also means the last gasp of yard sales and antique store sales that my husband can’t drive by. This particular shop had auxiliary rooms made out of tractor trailer boxes and were filled with vintage horrors.

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Ack!

😱

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Wow.

Please note the base table of this lamp lights up as well.

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Inside, my husband combed the shelves for treasure but thankfully came out empty handed.

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I’d much rather view foliage.

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Statue of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain at Bowdoin College. Hero of Gettysburg, he taught rhetoric and modern languages as a professor and later served as the college’s president. His home is across the street.

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The beer blahs.

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Another beautiful fall day, another scenic drive in the never ending search for good beer.

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North to Bangor.

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To the Bangor Beer Company.

Hidden behind the mall, in the back of a Chinese restaurant… it was an odd little place.

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With a line of old pinball machines and some quirky art.

The beer? Maybe we’re too picky… we try a lot of craft breweries and may set our standards too high… but we found this selection dishwater flat and not at all interesting.

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Elderflower grapefruit martini for me.

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We expected the sesame chicken appetizer to be better seeing that it came from the large Asian restaurant in front, but it was so tough and stringy we didn’t bother ordering a full meal.

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The men’s room floor made my husband smile and snap a picture, but that’s not reason enough to ever visit this brewery again.

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Passing through downtown Bangor…

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We grabbed a quick sandwich and took the back roads home.

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😊

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Hope springs eternal.

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Even when we’re taking a scenic drive…

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Just cruising some fall foliage…

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My husband has to stop.

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And while I don’t mind antiquing once in a while, these overstuffed, packed to the rafters junk stores drive me crazy.

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No room to move and entirely too much crap overloads my senses… but the husband loves them and always thinks he going to find buried treasure.

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Photo of my husband failing to find treasure inside and checking out behind the building.

🥴

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Thankfully they wanted $1,200 for this old wagon, otherwise he’d be building another extension to our shed.

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Some things are not worth waiting for….

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I realize I haven’t posted many photos of our fall foliage this year.

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The reason being it hasn’t been a very good leaf peeping season.

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Oh, there’s color…

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But by Maine standards it’s been very muted this autumn.

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Too much rain late in the summer and an early mini cold snap that forced the trees to turn too soon could be the reason.

Anyway…

After running a few errands down south, we realized we’d skipped lunch and headed to a very popular Wells restaurant for an early dinner.

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Off season, on a Thursday… and there was a line half an hour before they opened. We weren’t going to wait, but.

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It’s a steakhouse and my husband loves a good steak.

When the doors opened and the mad rush for upstairs dining was in full force, we took the road less traveled and headed for the bar on the first floor.

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This place is impossible to get in during the summer, jam packed every night so we were expecting amazing things.

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My appetizer was not one of them.

Shrimp and crab stuffed mushrooms. Dry uninteresting balls of stuffing they must have waved a crab over and called it good.

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Two overly sweetened cocktails in, my salad was basically a bowl of iceberg lettuce drenched in bottled blue cheese.

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We both ordered the filet mignons, which were decent enough… though nothing to gush over.

Places like this always make me wonder why people are willing to stand on line for basically nothing special.

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Fryeburg Fair fall leaves finale… finally.

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Ox.

These big guys can be prickly,

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Like this one who head butted my husband right after I snapped a picture.

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When they’ve had enough, they let you know it in no uncertain terms.

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And standing behind them?

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Not always a good idea. Let’s just say this one had to do his business and leave it at that.

By 5:00pm, we’d been walking around the fair for 7 hours, it was raining and we decided to call it quits.

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Leaving the gate, we took a right instead of a left and opted for the long way home.

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Maine, by way of New Hampshire….

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Up and over Evan’s Notch.

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A pass cut through the White Mountains.

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Again, there was mostly muted foliage …

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And not the vivid bright colors we usually enjoy.

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But even muted, it’s lovely.

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Late autumn color on Bear Notch Road.

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Leaving the Kancamagus highway, we took an alternate route. Up and over the Bear Notch road.

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In certain sections, the autumn color was stunning.

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And from the scenic lookout where I screamed at my husband to stop the car….

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Pure perfection.

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Breathe deep of that fresh, crisp mountain air….

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And you’ll know why I keep returning to visit these glorious unspoiled areas.

❤️

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Foliage, the required selfie with foliage, a personalized warning and Sabbaday Falls, part one.

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We didn’t have to look any further than out our balcony to find a stunning vista of changing leaves. Every morning the color was slightly different.

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And you know I couldn’t resist that.

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On our way out that morning I noticed a sign I hadn’t spotted the night before… and I had a hard time believing it wasn’t put there just for me.

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No worries Pollard Brook Resort, I didn’t see any to feed… though I do take exception to the word varmint. In my experience, there are far more two legged ones of those.

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Ah… I do love the mountains.

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On the agenda that morning? Sabbaday Falls off the Kancamagus highway.

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It won’t surprise you to learn my husband’s first thought when he read this was, “I wonder if the tools are still there…” Good thing he didn’t have a shovel handy.

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It was just under half a mile hike to the falls.

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Past a babbling brook and on a wide, leaf lined path.

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As the elevation increased, fencing.

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It was so beautiful. So peaceful…

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A little farther on and the brook turned into a pool.

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Surrounded by glacial boulders. I was in rock heaven…

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And the husband was taking pictures, so you know it was good.

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We’ve driven by this area numerous times but never took the time to stop. Clearly that was a mistake.

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It took 10,000 years for water to wear down the rock and form the falls.

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With my bad knee, it took me nearly half that time to climb all the stairs.

To be continued….

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Leaves, more leaves…. and a few random turkeys.

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One of the nicest things about our resort in the mountains? Beautiful fall foliage right outside our door.

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We were a little past peak for this trip but it was still a lovely palette of color to wake up to.

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This quirky coffee house right down the road only opened the day we left which was disappointing. I haven’t been half baked in decades.

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First day of our trip? We drove…

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Here.

There.

Wherever the leaves took us.

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And if you’re driving with my husband that means traveling on some pretty obscure back roads. Often ones that turn to dirt.

Miles and miles, up and over mountains where there’s nothing but glorious foliage, nature….

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Bear warnings….

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And a randomly placed portapotty.

( Spellcheck kept changing this to portal Otto. I may have missed a prime Tardis opportunity there.)

Here’s a short clip of the splendor. Yours truly is announcing the sighting of turkeys on the left, repeatedly and quite loudly. I do this when I spot cows as well, though in the deeper audible resonance they deserve.

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Ah….

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I love fall!

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And we’re off! Again.

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Yes, it’s true. We took another mini trip and I’m about to flood you with more travel photos.

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This time we just jumped across the border and headed to the White Mountains of north western New Hampshire.

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It’s one of my favorite areas… filled with scenic beauty and wondrous natural places to explore.

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These photos are from the famous Kancamagus highway. A 30 odd mile stretch of road cut right through the mountains.

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In peak foliage season it’s divine and while we were two weeks late for that, there was still some residual color.

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Until you reached the top.

But back down the other side it brightened up again.

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The resort we chose this time around was literally right off this road at the end of the National Forest.

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And for us, you can’t get much better than that.

Since check in wasn’t until 4:00pm, we headed to Woodstock.

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A quaint New England village…

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With a big brewery/restaurant/inn.

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You knew that was coming, right? The autumn beer on the far right was my pick. A rich, creamy amber with notes of pumpkin and nutmeg. Perfect!

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And right above my head, teasing me with every glance? A vintage ale crate, damn it. The husband was determined to purchase it for me but the manager didn’t care how much beer we drank, the answer was always no.

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And though our lunches didn’t appear appetizing?

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They were both delicious. Baked haddock, garlic smashed red potatoes and squash for me. Charbroiled mushroom Swiss burger for the hubs.

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A good start to the vacation… except for this uber creepy spare parts facsimile of a doll hovering alongside the bar.

That is the stuff of nightmares.

😳

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