Maryland and Massachusestts

Posted on September 20, 2013September 20, 2013 by Dusty Roads | 2 Comments

Maryland is the 2nd “M” state and Massachusetts is the 3rd.

Let’s start with Maryland first.

No… Not really. Maryland is part of what I think of as the political area…It’s close to Washington DC and Annapolis is in Maryland and I can remember going to the Naval Academy with my family to visit my brother.

That’s what I remember the most, that and how impressive it was to see all of the young cadets marching past. I can’t even begin to put into words what I was feeling but I can remember it to this day and it was about 40 years ago, maybe 42. I really don’t remember much else about the visit except seeing my brother and being so proud of him. It was a very emotional visit. So I suppose I could cross it off but I think it needs another visit to be official. 🙂

M is for Massachusetts

Yes..I better say yes. I’ve been living here since 1974. Hard to believe it. I originally came out for company training for 6 months. Once the training ended the only openeing was right here in Malden, MA so I stayed.

Massachusetts has everything you could want; mountains, ocean, cities, rural area, summer sun and winter snow.

We’ve got National Parks and history. My word, we have history galore from Minuteman National Park with it’s Patriots Day Reenactments to Boston’s Freedom Trail. There’s Salem, MA of the historic witch trials, Old Ironsides, Bunker Hill, Faneuil Hall.

As if that wasn’t enough we have nature! We have Whale Watches and Deep Sea Fishing, we’ve got seals and zoos and aquariums.

And we’ve got Old Cape Cod with a scenic train and the National Sea Shore and the annual scallop festival. We can even boast great white sharks now!

And we have Lighthouses.

Maine does not have a monopoly there! I believe there are 63 in all.


Annisquam	Baker’s Island	Bass River (West Dennis)
Bird Island	Bishop and Clerks	Borden Flats
Boston Harbor	Brant Point	Brant Point (Old)
Butler Flats	Cape Ann (Thacher Island)	Cape Cod (Highland)
Cape Poge	Chatham	Clark’s Point
Cleveland Ledge	Cuttyhunk	Deer Island
Derby Wharf	Dog Bar Breakwater	Duxbury Pier
East Chop	Eastern Point	Edgartown Harbor
Fort Pickering (Winter Island)	Gay Head	Graves
Great Point	Hospital Point Range Front	Hospital Point Range Rear
Hyannis	Lightship Nantucket I WLV-612	Lightship Nantucket II WLV 613
Lightship Nantucket LV 112/WAL 534	Lightship New Bedford LV 114/WAL 536	Long Island Head
Long Point	Marblehead	Mayo’s Beach
Minot’s Ledge	Monomoy Point	Nantucket Cliff Range
Nauset	Ned’s Point	Newburyport Harbor (Plum Island)
Newburyport Harbor Range Front	Newburyport Harbor Range Rear	Nobska Point
Palmer Island	Plymouth (Gurnet)	Point Gammon
Race Point	Sandy Neck	Sankaty Head
Scituate	Stage Harbor	Straitsmouth Island
Tarpaulin Cove	Ten Pound Island	Three Sisters
West Chop	Wings Neck	Wood End

Head west on RT 90, from Boston and you’ll find Springfield, home to Dr. Seuss and The “Big E” (Eastern States exposition) and the Basket Ball Hall of Fame.

Speaking of sports, Massachusetts is a pro sports kind of place. We have the Boston Bruins, The Red Sox, Fenway Park and Red Sox Nation. Out in Foxboro we have the New England Patriots and we’ve got the Revolution..not the 1776 revolution but the pro soccer team.

We host golf tournaments like the Deutsche Bank PGA tournament.

Heading back to Western Massachusetts Rt 90 rises upward to the Berkshire Mountains. The Appalachia Trail winds it’s way through here and we have Tanglewood and Jacobs Pillow for culture.

There’s still more. Massachusetts loves politics. You can find a political discussion almost anywhere and everyone has an opinion. 🙂 And we have higher education, Colleges and Universities abound.

Harvard Yard

There are too many to list.

Don’t get me wrong, Massachusetts is not all peaches and cream. After all, we had the “Big Dig” too and are still dealing with the consequences.

Talk about a major screw up! Traffic is worse now than ever. And we’re starting to head back to the bad old days of “Taxachusetts”…just when we thought it was safe to take our hands out of our pockets good old Governor Deval Patrick put his hands right in!

But even with all that I still am pretty pleased with my adopted state. It’s a great place to visit and not too bad a place to live.

M is for…

Posted on September 19, 2013September 19, 2013 by Dusty Roads

Wow, Did you realize there are 8 states that start with the letter M? I am not going to do all 8 in one post, especially since a couple of them are going to be crossed off as visited. So before I start can you name all 8 states?

Alphabetically Maine is first. So while you’re thinking about the other 7 states I’ll tell you a little bit about my neighbor to the north. I fell in love with Maine last year when I had the chance to take 2 “mini” vacations.

Maine

YES.

First thing that come to mind when I think of Maine is the gorgeous, rugged coastline. And if you have a rugged coast you need lighthouses. More than 60 lighthouses dot the Maine coast from the well known Nubble Light in York to West Quoddy Head, the easternmost lighthouse in the United States. I’ve seen and photographed a bunch of them, Nubble, Spring Ledge, Portland Head, Pemaquid and more but I’m a long way from all 60!+

Maine is for “Lobsta” or lobster if you want to be accurate. Everyone’s either heard of or eaten Maine Lobster, those feisty crustaceans that are so good boiled, fried, rolled, baked, in salad, well just about any way you want to eat them. Did you know that lobster were once so plentiful that they were used as fertilizer! Native Americans used them as bait to catch more appealing fish. They were considered poverty food and fed to servants and prisoners. You’ve come a long way , baby!

Maine is for wildlife.

I saw a big bull moose there while walking a nature trail.

I braved the sea to get a glimpse of puffins, crazy little clowns. I never realized how tiny they are until I saw them riding those crashing waves.

Maine has the first National Park east of the Mississippi, Acadia National Park. The park includes Mount Desert Island and Cadillac Mountain.

I still want to try a train ride from Boston to Portland. It’s called the “Downeaster”. It can be done in 1 day but it might be nicer to stay over in Portland a night to see a bit more.

By the way, I wrote a lot of posts on Maine last year. Here’s a link to just one of the many :https://aroundustyroads.com/2012/08/29/day-is-done-gone-the-sun/

Seafood Shanty

Posted on August 4, 2013August 4, 2013 by Dusty Roads

Most people choose their restaurants for the food and the ambiance. There’s one roadside clam shack that I choose for the wildlife.

Don’t get me wrong the food is delish…the usual seafood fare but I have as much fun with the birds and chipmunks when I’m there as I do enjoying the food. I typically order the fried scallop plate. It comes with plenty of fries to share.

At first I only had the little birds for company but eventually my friend “Chip” showed up.

Chip snatched up a French fry and it was going ….

going….

gone!

Just like a French Fry eating contest!

If you can tear yourself away from the antics of the birds and chipmunks, you can watch the boats cruise up and down the Cape Cod Canal.

The folks who work here during the season are great.

During this visit I saw a cruise ship on the canal that I’d never seen before. Turns out one of the people that works at the Seafood Shanty has a brother that works on the boat so I got all of the inside scoop! Networking is a wonderful thing, 🙂

Day at the Zoo

Posted on July 7, 2013July 7, 2013 by Dusty Roads

It’s the last day in Alaska and I’m so glad we are spending it at the Zoo. I love zoos. I even went to the zoo in Hawaii.

So we arrived via the Zoo shuttle right to the entrance. When it’s time to leave the shuttle will pick us up right in the parking lot. There’s even a little bench to sit on while we wait.

We bought our tickets and picked up our maps and followed a family of rambunctious little ones onto the paths. The paths cross crossed and meandered so we picked the “must see” animals and figured we’d go there first. Grizzlies were on that list but they were also on the far side of the zoo.

There was a little deer in an exhibit that was just full of mischief. A Maintenance worker was repairing the enclosure and she just followed him everywhere trying to chew on his pants. When he finally shooed her away she took off to pick on a poor , abused looking turkey that shared her enclosure.

The tiger was sleeping and wasn’t going to move for anyone.

The wolves were pretty riled up. They paced along the fence line. A family with very young children were watching. The wolves seemed to be fixed on the kids. Did they think they were prey? A snack? The kids started making howling sounds and the pack joined in.

Once the family moved on the pack dispersed back into the trees in their habitat.

We saw a snowy owl, one of the birds that winters in MA and that I am still trying to get a photo of in the wild.

There was a beautiful bald eagle. They are so majestic that it always makes me feel bad when I see them in captivity. On the other hand many of the captive eagles were injured and couldn’t be rehabilitated enough to survive in the wild. I guess being captive is better than the alternative.

We passed the black bear, a moose hiding in the shadows, and a pretty little red fox snoozing in the sun.

We got a close up look at the caribou.

We crossed a bridge over a pond and watched the swan whose very presence owned the pond. I’m not a “birder” but I think it was a Trumpeter Swan. We have “Mute” Swans around home and it wasn’t that. The bill was black while the Mute Swans have yellow bills and a black eye ridge.

Silly me spotted a squirrel and the picture I got of him is one of my favorites.

There was a good exhibit of the Dall Sheep so we finally got to see this elusive animal up close.

Finally we spotted the grizzly bear enclosure. They weren’t cooperating any more than the wild ones. One was sprawled in the brook in the shade down in a corner of the enclosure. No good angle for a picture. The other one was in a hollow taking a nap. His big foot and an ear about all that could be seen.

By now we’d spent more than an hour so we needed to hustle back to catch the shuttle. We passed the otters and stopped for a minute at the Polar Bears.

We skipped the musk ox and probably a few other animals but time was now of the essence. It was harder to find our way out of the zoo than in!

Finally the exit and timing was perfect. The shuttle was pulled up and waiting.

Natural History Tour into Denali

Posted on June 27, 2013June 27, 2013 by Dusty Roads

As we’d been told our tour was on an old school bus style bus. Remember those windows that you could open from the top by squeezing the release mechanism ? The window would then open 1/2 way so the top of the window was open but not the bottom. Sort of like a double hung window for a bus. Well that’s the kind of windows we had. To take pictures you had to balance on the seat to get the window open and then either lean back (Still standing…sort of) or lean over the seat in front of you to get a shot with no window glass or frame in the way.

The bench seats had been replaced but that was the only change and it might have been easier to take pictures from the bench seats than the captain style. Each row of seats was placed so the frame of the window was right in the way.

Sandy and I settled in and I took the inside by the window. We’d been told that the bus would stop for wildlife and if it was safe, let us out to take pictures. In all the brochures you see the bus on the side of the road with the occupants standing outside watching the wildlife. We were about to discover that “art” and life were very different.

Once everyone was on our driver made a strange announcement. He said if we were on the tour to see wildlife then we were on the wrong bus. As far as I knew from chatting with the others on the tour, we all wanted to see wildlife. No one got off so I thought he must be kidding.

He took a head count and we were on our way. Everyone’s eyes were peeled hoping to see animals. And we did begin spotting some. First up were moose.

We spotted a couple making their way through the snow. One of them had a radio collar and she seemed to be struggling.

At first we were all concerned until someone suggested that she might be about to give birth and that was why she was having trouble getting through the snow when the other moose was fine. I hope that was the case. It made everyone feel better anyway.

We stopped at a rest area where 2 rangers gave a short presentation about the history of the area.

One of them had a really vintage looking uniform and with his beard he was a ranger “poster boy”.

We also got another chance to see Denali (Mt. McKinley) who was again cooperating with us.

The “rest rooms ” were quite state of the art too.

As we stopped at the ranger check point that was as far as cars could go we saw a little Alaskan ground squirrel. He stuck around for quite a few minutes so we all had a chance to get pictures. He’s a cute little fella, isn’t he.

I also spotted a grouse, in fact several, but they blended in with the brush and were so quick to hide that I didn’t get a picture . The bus was moving and if I’d yelled stop they would have been out of sight before he could hit the brakes.

There were more sea gulls flying around. Seemed strange so far from the sea. But it was time to turn around and head back to the lodge.