Chapter 9: Places After Ithaca, Part II

So, good news-bad news time.

Good news, I got batteries for my camera!

Bad news, they're in the car and I'm too lazy to go get them.

OH WELL ON WITH THE BLOG POST

Chapter 9: Boston, Falmouth, Martha's Vineyard, and by the way Nantucket

After spending a rainy evening in Portland, I drove on south to get to Boston to meet up with an uncle. The rainstorm of the night was mostly over, but there were patches of drizzle and rain between the bright sun all the way down the coast into the Boston area.

I made it to my uncle's house all right, and in time for dinner, too! We visited with family members over some amazing seafood, and then went to a fantastic production of The Jungle Book. It was a gorgeous piece, with great musicians and great stagecraft all around. And I really really wanted to steal all of the costumes because they were so pretty. But I didn't.

The next few days were spent in similar relaxation. Excellent food, excellent diversions, excellent company. We went to a Cavalia show (an off-shoot of Cirque du Soleil, but with horses!) and took a day on my uncle's boat to go up the harbor. We also went to see Lee Daniels' The Butler, which was an amazing experience not just because of the movie (which I loved – seriously, that cast...) but because we saw it in this super-super-fancy "Luxe" theater. The seats reclined and you could order food from your seat and they brought food. And beer. Did I mention the beer.

It was lovely to see family and be around Boston – especially since I didn't have to drive! I can't actually figure out how people manage to get around that city. It makes no sense. But it was fun, and I'm looking forward to visiting again.

The last couple of days in the area, I got to hang out with a good friend from school, and watch movies and such. We also went to the New England Aquarium and geeked out about sea lions and jellyfish. Good times were had!

I left the Boston area on Sunday 22 September, arriving at Falmouth around lunch time. Lina, another good college friend of mine, was there because she's doing a really neat marine term thing where they go out on a ship for six weeks and do oceanography/biology/science stuff. But first they have a few weeks on land to learn how to do all the things they'll be doing. And as it happened, the weekend was fairly free on Lina's schedule, so I drove over to meet up with her and we hopped on a ferry to Martha's Vineyard.

Because you can do that on the East Coast! Their islands are actually get-to-able! How exciting is that!

Martha's Vineyard was lovely. We walked around and looked at the beautiful bungalows (pictures will be here once I get un-lazy and retrieve batteries...) and rode on the awesome old carousel they have. We also got tasty foods, and had a lovely walk around the island.

Then we got back on the ferry and went back to sleep and recharge. Monday, Lina had classes and stuff, but I didn't so I got straight back on the ferry and went to Nantucket.

I'll pause here to give a little bit of background, so you can better understand how frigging excited I was to go to Nantucket.

I've read Moby-Dick somewhere around 12 times – never for school, interestingly enough – and as much as my brain hurts when it's slogging through the science-y bits, it remains one of my favorite books. The first time I read it (rather, had it read to me by my father), I was about seven years old. I read it to myself the next year, and the year after that, and then a few more times for good measure.

Say what you will about the "real meaning" of the book (I don't have to, since I never took a class on it!) but the story is fun and the writing is poetry (better poetry, in fact, than Melville's actual poetry*). Combine that with all the fun short stories I read about Nantucketers, and the Nathaniel Hawthorne essays, and you've got the literature I occupied myself with before Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published.

Now, I don't usually use words like "longing" when describing my own feelings, because the word feels very Austen and makes me shudder, but it's the only appropriate thing to say here. For the last fifteen years I have longed to visit New Bedford, and Nantucket, and all the other whaling towns, and immerse myself in that world which so captivated my childhood.

So when I found myself with the opportunity to make this dream reality, I basically bounced off the walls for a while. I was so excited. The whole ferry ride to the island, I sort of just sat there, reading the preface to Moby-Dick on my smartphone, and reminding myself of all the fun stories I knew. And when I got there, it was exactly perfect.

The whaling community of Nantucket, of course, hasn't been a thing in quite some time. But the island's tourist community is still interested in the history, and they have a really great museum of whaling, which I promptly made my way to.

First, though, I stopped in a local pub for a snack and a drink.

And that's when my day got awesome.

Y'see, there's this scene in Moby-Dick – it happens to be my favorite scene – where Ishmael and Quequeg are in a port town getting something to eat. They see a quaint little inn, they go in and sit down, and then they find out that the way you order is that you just holler back at the kitchen which kind of chowder you want (clam or cod). So they spend a merry luncheon just yelling, "Clam!" "Cod!" etc. back to the kitchen, and eating the tasty chowders.

Since this is my favorite scene from the book, I thought, "Hey, I'm in Nantucket, I should get some chowder!" So when I'd sat down at this pub (The Salty Dog), and the friendly food-getting guy had come over, I politely asked for a cup of clam chowder.

He promptly turned around and yelled, "CHOWDER!" back to the kitchen.

I just about fell off my chair.

When he asked why I seemed so excited, I explained that he'd just enacted my favorite scene from Moby-Dick, and that it had made my day. He laughed and said it was completely unintentional, but it was interesting I'd mentioned that book.

Then my day got very surreal. And also awesome.

Bit more background: Herman Melville based the story of Moby-Dick off of a few tales he'd heard while visiting the whaling capital of the nation, but the main story he used was that of the Essex. This was a whaling vessel which has the awful distinction of being one of the goriest and unluckiest ships in history (therefore muchly storied). The Essex was stove in by an infuriated sperm whale (spoilers: that's where Melville got the climactic scene for Moby-Dick), and her crew had to try to sail to the mainland in the three slightly-damaged longboats they had.

It . . . didn't go well for them. After losing sight of each other and drifting long enough to run out of food and water, two of the longboats' crews had to resort to cannibalism to survive. Of these, one was rescued by some British sailors, and the other was found by another Nantucket whaler, the Dauphin, off the coast of South America. There were only two men aboard the latter (Captain Pollard and Charles Ramsdell), both out of their minds from exposure, both gnawing on the bones of their dead mates.

Why does this background information mean that my day got surreal, says you? Wait for the punchline, says I.

The guy who took my order for chowder and hollered it into the kitchen? Yeah, he's the great-great-grandson of Charles Ramsdell, one of the survivors of the wreck of the Essex.

. . .

I had my favorite scene from one of my favorite books accidentally reenacted for me by a descendant of one of the people who were the reason said book was written in the first place.

Cue all manner of geeking out.

Seriously, I don't think I could really say that the Nantucket trip was the best day of my tour so far, because there have been a lot of great days . . . but it was totally the best day of my tour so far. I had such a blast. I rented a bike and rode across the island to the beach, where I found some good shells and walked in the surf, and then I went back to the ferry building and got back to the mainland. All in all, an amazing trip.

And that's today's update! This is still fairly well behind the times (I was on Nantucket on 23 September), but I'm getting there. Tomorrow I'll spend my morning on another update, and see how far I can get.

From Brooklyn, NY . . .
Julia

*Which as a collection is, objectively, blah. Pedantic and ham-fisted rhyme structures, paired with an understandable yet limited antebellum subject matter, make most of his Battle Pieces very difficult to sit through.

That being said, one of them ("Shiloh – A Requiem") is one of my favorite war poems of the era. It is exactly "In Flanders Fields" (another favorite) but five thousand miles removed and fifty years too early. I will reproduce the text here because I like it.

              Shiloh - A Requiem

              Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
              The swallows fly low
              Over the field in clouded days,
              The forest-field of Shiloh –
              Over the field where April rain
              Solaced the parched one stretched in pain
              Through the pause of night
              That followed the Sunday fight
              Around the church of Shiloh –
              The church so lone, the log-built one,
              That echoed to many a parting groan
              And natural prayer
              Of dying foemen mingled there –
              Foemen at morn, but friends at eve –
              Fame or country least their care:
              (What like a bullet can undeceive!)
              But now they lie low,
              While over them the swallows skim,
              And all is hushed at Shiloh.

                     (April, 1862)

Post-Hiatus Chapter 8: Places After Ithaca

Aaaaand we're back to our regularly-scheduled programming! Hi folks, welcome back to today's episode of "Julia finally gets off her butt and posts an update"!

I've had a lot of wonderful fun in the past (two? Geez I fell behind) weeks, so I'm going to try not to feel bad about not updating because I've been spending my time with wonderful people in wonderful places.

But I must move on, and as Bilbo Baggins wisely says when trapped in the goblin caves, trying to figure out what to do next:

"Go backwards? No! Sideways? Impossible! Forward? Only thing to do!"

Chapter 8: Vermont, Maine, Maine, Maine

Let's see. When last we left our me, I was in Ithaca, NY.

 . . . where did I go next . . .

Oh right, Vermont!

I left Ithaca on the morning of Monday 9 September, heading East and then North to eventually arrive in Burlington, VT. Along the way, there was some lovely scenery happening, including many different little lakes in Eastern upstate NY.

There was also just a lot of generically gorgeous trees and hills – I got to drive through the Catskills AND the Adirondacks! – and one section of highway where I was very confused because the GPS said I was heading North, and the roadsigns said I was heading North, but it was mid-afternoon and the sun was on my right. Like, very distinctly on my right.

I called my mom to let her know I might foreseeably end up in Alberquerque, and not to worry.

Speaking of lakes and pretty things, here's the bridge over Lake Champlain.

Burlington, VT is a nice little city-town-thing just on the East side of Lake Champlain. It was raining on and off, and kind of stormy-looking, and it was also sunset when I was in the area, so I got some neat pictures.

I should mention that all day that Monday, I was trying desperately hard not to let the vague head-cold that had crept in Sunday night take over completely, but it was a bit of a losing battle. So when I crossed the lake and saw a nice-looking restaurant, I went right in to see if they had soup. (They didn't, but they had a hot turkey sammich with gravy and cranberry-jelly-from-a-can and happiness, so that was helpful.)

Then I continued down the road to Burlington.

There were some lovely buildings in Vermont – particularly in Montpelier, which I didn't end up visiting but drove through so as to goggle at the architecture. Really neat stuff.

(Pictures incoming as soon as camera batteries have been acquired.)

I also stopped at a cute little roadside gift shop/café type thing-place and bought a tiny tiny little thing of maple syrup (it's so cute!) and a postcard which I promptly forgot on the counter (being, as I was, distracted by adorable syrup bottles).

Then, onward! I drove through lovely Green Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains at the tip of New Hampshire, heading towards Augusta, ME.

The next few days were all spent in various places in Maine – Augusta, Lincoln, Lubec, Portland – so I'll just note the highlights for now and post pictures later when I find a Radio Shack.

 – Augusta was nice, lovely views of things.
 – Stayed at a wonderful little BnB in Lincoln called the Whitetail Inn.
 – Spent most of the evening at the local Tim Hortons, because they're open 24 hours and have donuts and Wi-Fi!
 – Ate many donuts.
 – INTENSE and WONDERFUL thunderstorm that night. Got some video but it'll have to wait to get uploaded.
 – Spent next morning at Tim Hortons for aforementioned reasons.
 – Donuts.
 – Oh man. Donuts.
 – Eventually left Lincoln and made it to Lubec just in time for everything to be closed (apparently this happens at 5 there)
 – Was, however, able to buy a cup of hot chocolate from a Peruvian lady that I swear you could paint your house with (the chocolate, not the lady).
 – Hilariously pathetic story which will be in a separate post
 – Took some neat pictures of the lighthouse at Lubec
 – Almost accidentally drove to Canada
 – Got excellent food at an Irish pub by the docks (smoked mussels and haddock chowder – oh sweet baby Gandalf it was sooooo goooood)
 – Ended up going to bed at 8 PM because the internet and phone service were both so bad at the motel

I woke up at around 5:30 in the morning on Friday 13 September – on purpose – because of wanting to check off a bucket list item. Y'see, Lubec, Maine is the Easternmost point in the continental US, and there's a campground on the easternmost point of Lubec. So I drove out there at bum-fuck early in the morning (pardon my French, but I get cranky about mornings) and parked near-ish the edge of the campground.

Because, of course, sunrise was scheduled for 6:07 AM, and I wanted the sun to come up over me before literally anyone else in the country.

Because I am selfish, and an evil genius. Bwahahaha.

(Of course, it was pea-soup fog, being Maine in September, so the "sunrise" was more of a "gradually lightening fog", but I'm counting it!)

Then I went back to the hotel and got a few more hours of sleep.

I spent Friday driving down the coast of Maine to Portland – interestingly, Highway 1 is the most coastal route, just like it is in California. Is this a thing that civic engineers do? Name the highways starting at the coasts and moving in? Like a football field? Inquiring mind wants to know!

It was neat having a fun, curvy drive down the highway and every so often taking a turn to see ocean popping through the trees. I stopped and got a lobster roll and cup of chowder for lunch – excellent plan – and made it to Portland around dinner time.

(Portland, Maine felt exactly like Portland, Oregon when I was there, because it was raining and there were three Starbucks in a five-block radius of my location.)

That's as far as I'm going to go for this update, but I'm finally feeling productive so the next update will happen before too long. Plus, I'll get some batteries for my camera so I can put up more pictures.

For now, a shower and lunch and a giant duck!

From Pittsburgh, PA (yes, I know, I need to get you guys caught up) . . .
Julia