Archive for category New England

Hippie Central — Brattleboro and Putney, Vermont

Posted by adam in New England, New Hampshire, Vermont on July 26, 2009

A long day of driving into Vermont, courtesy of Google Maps.

Date of trip: July 19, 2009

When I told J that I had chosen Brattleboro, Vermont as our destination for this trip, she replied, “Oh, Hippie central.” She’d apparently been there before, whereas I had not, and her reply was especially funny because I had chosen Brattleboro precisely because it was hippie central, having just read about it the day before. J was a little skeptical about going to Brattleboro because the drive, at two and half hours, was a bit of a stretch for a one-day trip. But I talked her into it, and we managed to leave the house by 10 that morning, a major accomplishment for us. We took Route 2 to Vermont, stopping only once at a gas station somewhere near Athol, which would not have been extraordinary except for the fact that there was no power, and we ending up using the bathroom by flashlight (which made a routine event interesting, I guess).

We rolled into Brattleboro at around 12:30, drove right into town, and parked in front of an art gallery called Gallery in the Woods. We weren’t in the woods, we were downtown, but despite the misnomer, the gallery was still a great place filled with unusual pieces that I wanted to buy. I noted some artists’ names in my iPhone to look up later (which I deleted accidentally, but that’s another story). The gallery was a good introduction to the town.

The Gallery

We spent the next hour exploring the shops on Main Street. In addition to the gallery, I should mention Mystery on Main, which you should visit if you are a mystery/crime fiction fan. We bought several books and an old Sherlock Holmes print, and we chatted with the store clerk and another customer (who turned out to be a writer for huffpo) about Wallander on PBS. So yeah, we were having fun in Brattleboro. Our kinds of dorks.

It was time for lunch. We ended up grabbing wraps from the local coop and sitting on a bench by the river. It was nice enough, but later, while exploring the rest of the town, we discovered the Riverside Cafe, and we wished we had gone there. The cafe sits right on the Connecticut River, which separates Vermont from New Hampshire. This bridge abuts the cafe.

Green steel bridge crossing the Connecticut River

This way to New Hampshire

We took about a million pictures of the bridge, walked around some more, and decided it was time to move on. The guide book made Putney, which was about nine miles to the north along the river (point C on the map), sound interesting, so we headed up route 9 to check it out. There wasn’t much to it: the town center is literally a crossing that has a paper mill, a few craft and glass shops, and a large and fairly weird place dedicated to selling baskets and other woven products. There were life-size animals made from basket material hanging from the ceiling (shark, monkey, eagle, alligator–you name it), which left us somewhat in shock, as you can imagine. Nearby, one of the craft stores offered a display made up of clay faces. I’m sure the feeling that I had as I gazed upon the wicker armadillo is captured here somewhere.

The Many Faces of Putney

Soon after, we stopped at a little country store along route 9, and we bought local berries and cheese (which turned out to be delicious). To get home, we decided to cut through New Hampshire, along route 101. We were worried that it would take too long, but it was still early enough in the evening that we thought we’d enjoy the country roads. The drive went quicker than expected, and we were home in time to make dinner.

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Nahant – The Long and the Short

Posted by adam in Massachusetts, New England on July 18, 2009

The not-at-all-interesting route we took, courtesy of Google Maps.

Date of trip: July 12, 2009

This was a short trip, so I’ll make it a short post. (And we visited Short Beach, but I’ll talk about that in a minute.) There isn’t much to say about Nahant other than it is a nicer place to visit than Revere, but not nearly as nice as pretty much any other beach town along the North Shore. Think of Nahant as a poor man’s Marblehead, without the welcoming B&Bs and scrumptious seafood restaurants.

For us travelers, Nahant had little to recommend. Throughout the island, parking was for locals only, and we saw more than one scenic vista marred by No Parking signs. The local cops enforced this rule by circling the island and pouncing on any riffraff who had the audacity to pull to the side of the empty road and look at the ocean. Move along, citizen. This ocean is not for you.

There were two beaches, however. Short Beach (point B on the map) was the smaller of the two. This beach seemed to be where the locals hung out; it was quiet and unassuming, with lots of families. One side of the beach was flanked with houses, with stairs leading right down to the water. We talked about how it would be a nice place to live, and also how we might actually be able to afford to live there (unlike many other places on the North Shore). Anyway, this is Short Beach.

Summer on Short Beach

After we visited Short Beach, we skirted around the island, staying close to the water. Eventually, we lost patience with not being able to park or even stop and get out of the car to take pictures, and we headed to the second beach, called Long Beach. A restaurant sits on the edge of Long Beach, and we had lunch there and enjoyed the ocean views. We ate in the pub: nothing special but not too bad. Jenny reviewed the experience on Yelp.

After lunch, we paid the $3 to park so that we could check out the beach. It was a gorgeous day. The sun was warm and comfortable. The beach itself was fairly crowded, so there was some trash, but I guess that comes with the territory on a public beach. I didn’t mind much. We walked about half the length of the beach, and it was a good place to be. I saw this seagull there.

Landing Gear Down

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The Quiet Corner

Posted by adam in Connecticut, New England on July 6, 2009

Our trip down and around the Quiet Corner, courtesy of Google Maps.

Date of trip: July 5, 2009

Independence Day was noisy and raucous in the city, so we thought a fine way to recover might be to check out the sleepy towns and back roads of northeast Connecticut, sometimes called “the Quiet Corner.” We had a vague destination of Putnam, which our indispensable New England tour book described as a former mill town that reinvented itself as a kind of antique mecca. Antiques do not excite us; we do not “go antiquing.” But I liked the idea of visiting a former mill town that hadn’t turned into a depressing ghost town, like some other places we’ve visited.

We took the turnpike to route 395 and headed south to Putnam, in the opposite direction of last week’s trip to Clinton, which is about the same distance to the north on route 395. Having just visited Clinton the week before, we couldn’t help but compare it to Putnam, two former mill towns, equally distant from the turnpike to the north and south. While Clinton sits on the rim of the Wachusett Reservoir, Putnam straddles the Quinebog River. The Connecticut town’s unassuming brick buildings seemed plain compared to the grand and proud architecture of the town hall and churches surrounding Clinton’s Central Square. But these tall edifices didn’t work in Clinton’s favor; instead, they made the empty town seem all the more unapproachable and unwelcoming.

Clinton was barren and lifeless, while Putnam was busy with shoppers, bikers, and restaurateurs. Traffic was steady through the town center, and music spilled from the restaurants. Instead of the “no trespassing” signs that we saw everywhere in Clinton, we were met with hot dog stands and ice cream trucks. All of this created an atmosphere that made the mostly shabby storefronts seem charming and welcoming. We had lunch as a place called 85 Main, which emphasized local foods. I had the best raw oysters I’ve had in months there.

The river is just outside of the town center. We followed it north for about a quarter of mile (there is a path that you can walk) to find the Quiet Corner Creamery serving homemade ice cream. Just across the road, we saw an old mill along the bank of the river.

Mill on the Quinebog

Next to the creamery (we went with mint chocolate chip) was this abandoned warehouse, which we were pretty taken with.

Industry

After we checked out the mill and the warehouse, we left town and followed the route you can see on the link to Google maps above. The drive was as calm and idyllic as you would hope. One thing I might mention is the number of bikers we saw, pretty much everywhere in the Quiet Corner. They disrupted the quiet, but that’s okay. A nice-looking red Harley sneaked into this picture of a bridge on route 44.

Downtown Crossing

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Clinton, the Wachusett Reservoir, and the Old Post Road

Posted by adam in Massachusetts, New England on June 29, 2009

Here’s our route to the Wachusett Reservoir and back again. We took the Mass Pike there and the Boston Post Road back.

After two solid weekends of rain, we finally managed to resume our summer trips this weekend. How we ended up with the destination of Clinton is anyone’s guess, but I think I am to blame. See, the thing is, I sort of like the town’s website, and I was especially taken with the fifty great things about Clinton list. I imagined we would take a quick look at the Russian icons, and maybe check out the view from the Ledge, and then the dam. Most of all, I wanted to see the old railroad tunnel. How I longed to take pictures of that tunnel exactly like the one I just linked to. Alas, alas.

We drove into Clinton on a Saturday afternoon, and the place was like a ghost town. There were very few people around, and all of the shops were closed. If you think I’m exaggerating, see for yourself.

All that's missing is a tumbleweed rolling by

It took us awhile, but we finally managed to find a parking spot near Central Park, in front of the Russian Icon museum, which was due to close twenty minutes later. So we skipped that and took a walk around the park, a well-maintained public green space that is about a city block in size, ringed by the austere architecture of the surrounding buildings. The northwest corner of the park has a tall fountain, which wasn’t turned on, filled with funky-looking, stagnant water. As if to emphasize the filth of the fountain’s green, stinky water, a little boy ran up and peed in the fountain just as I was taking the following picture.

Ladies of the fountain

We had a late lunch at Via Alto 27, which we were amazed to find open in the deserted town, and even more amazed by the delicious, homemade pasta.

After lunch, we tried to check out some of the fifty great things, but we were denied at every turn. We couldn’t find the Ledge, and the dam was gated off completely. Also, while we saw no sign of the fire roads around the reservoir, we did see No Trespassing signs nearly every fifty feet. I understand that it’s a public water supply, but the signs make the whole empty town seem that much more unwelcoming. Most disappointing, though, was the old railroad tunnel being inaccessible and hidden away. This dude managed to reach it, but we weren’t really up for parking on a residential street, walking down the highway, and cutting through backyards and woods to see the tunnel. Maybe we should have.

Anyway, we ended up driving around town.

Everybody knows this is nowhere

After that, we drove around the reservoir, which is gorgeous in places, and then came home via route 20, which alternates between strip malls and wooded areas.

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Rhode Island: Wickford, Narragansett, and Point Judith — Part 2

Posted by adam in New England, Rhode Island on June 12, 2009

Here’s the route we took, courtesy of Google Maps, driving down the coast in mid-June. This post focuses on the B to C part of the trip.

The drive from Wickford down route 1A toward Point Judith was right along the ocean. The light (almost nonexistent) traffic made for a relaxing and easy trip through the small towns of Saunderstown and Bridgetown — white sails on the open ocean peeked through the trees. We passed Narragansett Beach and arrived at a pier packed with people strolling along the boardwalk and lolling on the decks of seafood restaurants. We drove under a large stone arch, and here we should have stopped to take some pictures, but it was already late in the afternoon so we kept moving.

Just past the pier, route 1A becomes Ocean Road, but you can’t see the ocean much at all because it is blocked by the gigantic, envy-inducing mansions, most of which are surrounded by high gates and/or shrubs. No, you cannot see the ocean, and no, you will never live in a house like this. I even saw a fucking Rolls Royce pulling out of a driveway, I swear to you.

Anyway! We eventually arrived at Point Judith, which is pretty great. I don’t usually get excited about the history of places, but the sinking of the SS Blackpoint and the ensuing chase and destruction of the attacking U-boat is spelled out in grim detail on a display near the lighthouse, and it reads like the stuff of WWII legend. The Judith Point Light itself is protected by the Coast Guard, who have a house on site. Here’s a couple of them pitching and hitting fly balls near the lighthouse.

Coast guards near the Judith Point Light

And here’s a shot of the water behind the lighthouse.

From the Judith Point Light

There may be better ways to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon in June, but I can’t think of one.

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Rhode Island: Wickford, Narragansett, and Point Judith — Part 1

Posted by adam in New England, Rhode Island on June 10, 2009

Here’s the route we took, courtesy of Google Maps, driving down the coast in mid-June.

The drive south out of the city along route 93 includes some nice highway decorations, like a giant windmill and a gargantuan watertower painted in a bright array of colors. Once you get past those things, it’s a race to route 95 and on down to Rhode Island, where the cities of Pawtucket, Providence, Cranston, and Warwick are densely packed together along the highway.

Our destination was vague, although we were thinking somewhere near Point Judith, which I saw on Google maps. When we came to Wickford, we just had to stop for lunch. Wickford is the picture-perfect New England town, almost stunning in its quaintness and calm, topping even Exeter, New Hampshire. We had no trouble finding a place to park, right along the water.

Yeah, this place is pretty

We also saw this duck

There are a few different places to eat along the water. I can’t remember the name of place where we ate, but I had my first lobster roll of the summer, and the ratio of lobster to mayo was just right. Then we walked around town; here’s a picture to give you an idea.

Wickford: It's Kind of Perfect™

As we were driving out of town, J read aloud from the guide book that the fictional town of Eastwick from Updike’s Witches of Eastwick was based on Wickford.

In the next post, I’ll describe our drive down route 1A: beaches, baseball, and a lighthouse.

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Southeastern New Hampshire

Posted by adam in New England, New Hampshire on June 8, 2009

Here’s route we took, courtesy of Google Maps, up on into New Hampshire.

Our first stop was Exeter, where we had lunch at The Loaf and Ladle. We had about twenty soups to choose from, which was incredibly exciting. We passed up more adventurous options like strawberry and went with mulligatawny (super yum) and veggie veggie (so-so). We also had homemade cinnamon bread, which went perfectly with the curry-based mulligatawny. We sat on the back porch overlooking the Exeter River.

The Exeter River

Exeter is the home of Phillips Exeter Academy, a fancy-schmancy boarding school. We didn’t stop to see the campus, but just drove on by. Before we left, we saw a blue heron.