Travel

The photo above is the view out the window to the porch of the cottage my cousin and her husband were renting for their 2 week stay on the island. They have a land line phone (cell coverage is very spotty) and a propane stove and refrigerator, but no electricity. Light is provided by kerosene lamps or candles. There is electricity all over the place on the island, but it costs about 10x what it does on the mainland. Plus there is the expense of putting in wiring in older homes. The Vaughn House where they are staying was built in the 1700’s. The expense is also the reason there are no street lights anywhere on the island, so when the sun goes down you better have a flashlight or the full moon to find your way back to where you are staying.

Last night we went the Cracker Barrel across the street from our HIE to have breakfast for dinner. It was 6 o’clock in the evening and the place was crawling with Hokies on their way home from a football game. We even had to wait 20 minutes to get seated*. As we sat there waiting on our food I could barely hear myself think for all the chatter and dinnerware noises. When I could get a thought in edgewise, all I could get was that there were more people in that restaurant right then, than we saw in our whole two days on Monhegan Island.

*Cracker Barrel is the only place we really wait like that.

When I woke up this morning at 5:00 AM and got up to use the restroom I was alone in in the bed of Room 303 in the Holiday Inn Express in Roanoke, VA. Donna was not in the bathroom either. I turned on the light and she wasn’t in the chair in the corner of the room either. I was alone. My first thought was she had woken up early and gone for a walk, but dismissed that when I looked outside and it was still pitch black. My second thought was she had been abducted by aliens. My third and more likely scenario is that she was curled up on a couch in the lobby sleeping. I have a nice loud snore sometimes which is fine if she gets asleep before me, but if not, then one of us goes to the other bedroom in our house.

Donna was actually across the hall in Room 302. I started snoring, her usual tactics of getting me to be quiet, poking, prodding or talking me into rolling over didn’t work, so she went downstairs at midnight and rented a second room.

click image for biggie size

Brother Paul, Donna and I set sail back to the mainland this morning on the Hardy III and while the seas were not nearly as rough as the trip out, they were still rolling some. The visibility, was if anything worse, as fog, thick as pea soup, surrounded the ship until about 100 yards from our destination of New Harbor when the sky turned a beautiful blue.

We, along with the other dozen or so passengers, were given a rousing send off by the cousins and various hangers-on at the dock. We parted ways thoroughly bitten by the Monhegan bug, vowing to return next year or at least a lot sooner than the 15 years since our last visit.

We made the trip to Monhegan Island in small craft warnings aboard the Hardy III. Sixty feet seems like more like a big craft to me, but trust me in 8 to 10 foot seas it is rather small. Your author, through only shear force of will and some Gin Gins candies, managed to not get sea sick. Donna and brother Paul seemed unfazed by the tossing and turn which I accredit to the fact that they had been passengers in the Purple Whale while barreling down Maine 32 to New Harbor and been immunized to whoopty-doos and g-forges on the way to New Harbor.

After yesterday’s washout of a day and today’s forecast of a repeat, we were pleasantly surprised to find nearly perfect weather on the island this afternoon. It is supposed to be great tomorrow too. And more importantly great as well Friday morning for our return trip to the mainland about the tiny ship Hardy III.

Both of us tire of the interstate travel, either as driver or as passenger, just sometimes it doesn’t make sense. Today was one of those days, but we still managed to get in a few back road miles. While traveling up I-81 in Pennsylvania on our way to I-84 Donna directed me to a road that appeared to be a shortcut, and it was a more direct route, but it probably didn’t save any time, still it was well worth the diversion.

We passed through Hometown, PA which is not to say my hometown, but just a town called Hometown. It did serendipitously take us through a small town that had been renamed for the man King Gustav V of Sweden called the greatest athlete in the world, Jim Thorpe. If you are wondering how the town got his name, even though Jim never set foot in while he was alive, read the explanation on Wikipedia.

We made a brief stop in Sparrow Hill, NY to visit with an older “cousin” of Donna’s, they share related grandmothers or something, who she has only exchanged cards with. She and her husband live in an awesome little place back in the woods that the cousin’s father built that overlooks the Delaware River (which can only be seen in the winter for all the trees.)

After a brief visit with them we headed back down to I-84 to continue our drive to the ex-Hardware Capital City of the World and my real hometown, New Britain, CT. Boy are we glad we don’t live around here, the traffic on I-84 not long after we entered Connecticut came to a grinding halt, all 3 lanes. It took about 30 minutes to creep 5 miles and then as magically as it appeared, it disappeared.