New England Leaf Peeping--

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FALL IN NEW ENGLAND

When I reached an age that I could fully appreciate the glossy photos of a calendar, I was enamored by the autumn colors of New England. I thought what a treat it would be to travel the back roads of rural Vermont or New Hampshire, and ogle at the changing hues of fall. This October on the "peak weekend" for color, Daisy and Alabaster Hickey became what New Englanders call "Leaf Peepers." We were not disappointed by any measure at the glory autumn brings to this quiet region of small villages and old traditions. The photos of rolling hills and mountainsides covered in the rusty foliage of fall were as brilliant and as wonderful as I had imagined. The setting sun's low shafts of light intensified the oxidized hues, and caused one's head to be in constant motion so as not to miss a hidden splash of brilliance.

Leaf Peeper's Delight

Good friends from Montana, now residing in wilds of New Hampshire, invited us to experience New England with them; an offer we gleefully accepted. The small university town of Plymouth, New Hampshire was our destination.

BRONX

We anticipated that the drive up would be an uneventful slog through New Jersey's Industrial Corridor, which is an eye-burning, gas emitting complex of oil refineries and general, mechanized ugliness; and I am happy to report that we were not disappointed—in the least. However, once in New York our GPS suggested a shortcut across the Bronx. This unscheduled detour at 10:30pm took us down narrow, car-packed, unlit streets with shadowy creatures loitering in the dark. It was downright unnerving!

QUALITY

Once north of New York's foulest, we pulled into a Quality "Ain't" Inn, and looked forward to a good night's sleep. It was in Newburgh, New York, and I would sleep in a ditch before I considered lodging there again. The walls of this sprawling motel were constructed of paper, and the finest details of our neighbor's conversations could easily be heard. At three in the morning, Daisy had had enough, and requested that we be relocated to a quieter room (I was too tired to care).

Our new room had two pictures over each bed, and at a glance my mind registered seeing a horse drawn coach, leafless trees, and what appeared to be the silhouette of the canyon walls of Utah's Zion National Park. Upon closer examination I came to the realization that it was not Zion, but New York's Central Park. All part of the quality deception.

Before sunrise I heard a gentle rap on a door. It was our neighbor trying to encourage her husband to expedite his business in the bathroom. Shortly thereafter, we packed up our belongings and headed north, away from the Bronx and the absence of quality. After breakfast at Neptune's Diner (a first rate eatery) we skirted New York State's lower Adirondack Mountains, turned east and headed across the girth of Vermont. In case you were wondering, it was not until we got to New Hampshire that I spied my first Adirondack chair.

VERMONT/NEW HAMPSHIRE

These diminutive States encircle some of the most beautiful country the Northeast has to offer. Vermont is my favorite, and it is maple syrup that now courses through my veins. Gawd, I love Vermont!

BREAKFAST ON MAIN STREET

After an evening of fine dinning, great conversation, and an honest, restful night's sleep, we met our friends at an honest-to-gawd diner, and resumed our marathon praise of New England. The diner car, turned restaurant, is named Fracher's Diner, but do not let that fool you; its current owner renamed it the Main Street Diner. And thus it shall remain until someone else buys it, and names it something else.

The interior of the diner car turned restaurant

CAMP ON GILDED POND

After a fine breakfast, our hosts invited us out to their "camp" to sit, and enjoy the pond. The pond was a small lake which fed a larger lake (at which, incidentally, the movie “On Golden Pond” was filmed), which poured into another lake, which emptied into yet another lake, and so on, and so forth right down to the Atlantic Ocean. At least that is my romantic assumption.

The view from their lake front property

As we sat on the banks of "Gilded Pond," a name I gave it, I could not help but engorge my mind with the fabulous view before me. Although a glance around the lake would indicate little going on, a closer assessment would reveal evidence of considerable activity on this quiet body of water.


There were rising fish snagging hapless bugs from the water, kayakers leisurely paddling the lake's circumference, a fisherman languidly casting his line, a couple in a canoe heading for their hideaway cabin on a small, wooded island, and of course the twitter of birds. What were we all doing, you may ask? I cannot speak for the others, but I was disengaged, lost in reflective rumination. Not unlike a cow eating grass--in a meadow--in New England.

Various Houses, Store Fronts, and Curiosities Along Our New England Journey

Passing vehicles were channeled through these friendly blockades to solicit donations for the volunteer fire department or the humane society, they either had a boot or bucket in hand. I stopped a little beyond the sight of the township's constable, and held out a camera bag soliciting for leaf peeper donations. I got one Twinkie and a half eaten bolony sandwich. My only complaint was they used too much mustard.

Robert Frost, Norman Rockwell, and Daniel Webster all called New England their home at one time or another. This man was none of the aforementioned people of history.

Need I comment?

Our GREAT accommodations at the Plymouth, New Hampshire's Pilgrim Inn

I have not a clue as to what the cut-out cows were all about, but people were taking pictures of them--like me!

The white court house(now museum) in the background is where Daniel Webster defended his first legal case in 1805. And lost.

Our trip back home was less eventful, and safely took us through the Bronx. However, the next time we travel north we are going to go farther inland, and bypass all this wonderfulness.

Projects at Twilight

Bridge Over Troubled Water

And on Monday it was back at work with oodles of buses and traffic with nowhere to go, but to wait.

Copyright © 2008 Jonathan Aspensen All rights reserved. No part of this website, nor any of its contents, may be
reproduced in any form without the express written permission of
Jonathan Aspensen.

To The Beach We Go--

The Drive Going

This Saturday morning I sleepily looked out the front door window and to my surprise saw that we were socked in with a heavy fog. The air conditioner kept our townhouse unrealistically cool, and so without thinking as to the season I slipped into my sweatpants and “hoodie” (long sleeve sweatshirt with pull-over hood), leashed our dog for its morning trot, and stepped out the door into a more dreadfully humid environment than I thought possible. Relating this experience to a not yet fully awake wife, she suggested that we head for the beach. “Fine idea,” I thought; if we were going to be miserable in this thick humidity, we might as well do so on the coast where the humidity might have competition with a complementary breeze from Heaven. Hours later -- the beach is not exactly down the street you understand -- we stepped ashore at Hammonasset Point which is east of New Haven, Connecticut.

A closed down, actual, diner car and erstwhile restaurant in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
New Brunswick was a seedy, graffiti covered town with hoards of rude drivers coming at you from every direction. Now in all fairness, there may well be a prettier side to the town that I did not see, but the main drag through it was just that -- a drag. It was New York City in miniature -- absent the crush of yellow cabs.

When you think of New England you imagine quaint boroughs, and townships with white churches whose steeples jab sharply above the trees. Well it t'ain't so along the coast, that is, it ain't so what I saw! It looked like anything but the picture postcard I think of New England as. However, we passed through the Ivy League town of Princeton, New Jersey, and were awed by the diverse mansions of various designs and what we were able to see of the campus it looked as if someone had torn a page right out of medieval England. I know, New Jersey is not considered New England. But Princeton was the only saving grace along the road.

The price of gas was slightly astounding, $4.43 for regular and diesel was a staggering $4.93 a gallon. I am sure that by this fall these prices will be considered benevolent. Start filling coffee cans, and Mason jars now!

On the whole, we stayed on the interstate and were whizzing by some of the most undesirable real estate of the Eastern seaboard. We passed through industrial zones, dilapidated row houses, walls of graffiti, and Stalin-style projects that warehoused the poor. I wondered what the people’s view of their life was as they lounged on their narrow, sky-high patios overlooking the Bronx; their “backyards” -- stacked one atop another, and cluttered with B-B-Qs, lawn chairs, and flagged by drying clothes of color -- was a picture of urban uniformity. But what really struck me was the sterile environment void of even one weed to fuss over. If I were to live in a project I would garnish my slab of concrete with wilderness! I would have planter boxes of dandelions, and crabgrass, thistles, and flowing drapes of puncture vines. Why my lofty courtyard of concrete would reflect the world around me in shades of prickly green, and wafts of smog!

From the New Jersey side of the Hudson River we could see the Empire State building. In light blue silhouette it stood alone, in audience with skyscrapers bunched to its north. What an edifice it is; a mountain range on its edge; Jacob’s ladder at its first landing -- wow!

The View From New Jersey

The following portrait was a collaborate effort by two eye-witnesses to fully illustrate an event that no picture could possibly explicate:

While heading north the loud rumble of motorcycles could be heard coming up from the rear. The first biker was a wiry, tattooed fellow, in a bandanna, dark sunglasses, and a stringy beard that the wind blew over his shoulder. The second biker was a large man in a tank-top, and whom we presume, had recently lost a good deal of weight. He was still quite stout (stout my gluteus maximus, he was huge!), but not as immense as he once was. The blanket of loose skin below his upper arm flapped in the 80mph slipstream that blew over his rotund, tattooed, biker’s body like amber waves of grain in the Midwestern wind, the tattoos rippling on his skin like patriotic symbols on a flag from Bikerville. Of course, what we saw, and how it has been tastefully masked is far from the visual reality. The verity is, the view was fleeting and most captivating; but we have not captured just how repellent it was.

Upon concluding our pleasant, and late lunch (we ate at 5:30 PM), we only stayed for 30 minutes, and then it was time to head back.

Copyright © 2008 Jonathan Aspensen All rights reserved. No part of this website, nor any of its contents, may be
reproduced in any form without the express written permission of
Jonathan Aspensen.