Cross-Country Skiing in Maine

This past week Rustin, Ethan and I took a trip up to Maine for cross-country skiing at a collection of AMC huts near Greenville; I thought I would write a blog post about it, since it was a lot of fun.

Thursday, Jan 21:

Up at 6:15 to finish getting packed and organized. Rustin rolled in around 7:15; together we ganged up on pestering Ethan (who was still eating his cereal at that point I think) and got our various bags consolidated and transferred to my car.

The traffic gods smiled on us; we had no noticeable slowdowns for the whole drive, in spite of venturing onto Route 95/128 smack in the middle of rush hour (kind of amazing). The drive to Greenville takes you up 95/295 until Newport, then up a series of smaller roads (route 7, route 23, etc). We rolled in right around noon and had lunch at a local pizza place. 

At around 1pm we headed over to "North Woods Outfitters", a large outdoor gear store in the center of town. They have an arrangement where you park you car at the AMC winter parking lot (about 10-12 miles east of Greenville), then they shuttle you and your gear back around up to the north and dump you at the northernmost hut (West Branch Pond Camp); this was the option we selected.  Although the huts are not that far away from each other on the map, the transfer takes quite a while (almost an hour), since you have to make a big loop around.

Most of the roads we took were not that interesting, but we did get one good overlook view of Moosehead Lake, plus a very brief glimpse of Mt Katahdin (looking very steep and snow-covered) up to the north, from one of the high points.

We were greeted right when we arrived by Eric, part of the family that runs the camp (very nice fellow). He helped us with our bags and got us settled into our cabin: three beds and a small living area with comfy chairs and a nice wood stove (plus hot water for tea and cocoa, etc). Nice bathrooms, too -- heated (shocking!) with real plumbing, lights, showers, and the whole nine yards (the bathrooms were off in a separate outbuilding not far from the cabins).

Eric told us that we were the first group of the season to be doing the whole north-to-south hut tour, so that was interesting. Another family was also scheduled to arrive, but not until later.  The three of us were itching to get some exercise after being cooped up in the car all day, so we got our gear on as quickly as we could and headed out for a short ski before losing the light.

Ethan outside our cabin:

View to the east:

Getting ready to head out for our first ski:

We did about a 3.5 mile loop that runs around the main lake bordering the camp; it was a good way to blow off steam.  Cold (15-17 Fahrenheit or so) and windy, but we were exercising, so it didn't matter much.  Nice dry, crunchy snow... not too much of it, but enough that there weren't real bare patches to contend with.

Back by around 5:10 or so, then we sat around the stove, read, and munched on snacks until 6:30. Dinner was ribs, beans, mashed potatoes, salad, and chocolate bread pudding for dessert -- quite tasty (very New England).

We heard a little from Eric and others about the history of the place, and how it's evolved over time. Turns out that there used to be a railroad running up to Greenville; there was a big hotel, and it was a pretty significant vacation destination; all of that went by the wayside once the automotive era arrived. We talked a bit about canoeing in the area, as well. It turns out that you can actually canoe all the way from Greenville to the Allagash river up north -- there are two portages, one about a mile and then another that is 3.5 miles, but the rest of the time you're on rivers and lakes.

Our trusty stove inside the cabin (a Jotul, one of the nicer models). In fact this cabin was the comfiest one one the trip.

Gorp!

For some reason Ethan looks like a manifesto-throwing revolutionary in this photo -- who knows what sort of scheme he is cooking up.

Yours truly:

Small hockey rink shoveled out on the pond next to the cabin--  we had no skates, however, so we couldn't do much with it. Lights out at 9pm (and by that I mean the electricity got turned off!), so we went to bed fairly early. We did get to listen to the other family arrive-- unlike us, they did actually bring skates, so there was a spirited moonlight hockey game out on the pond for almost an hour.

Rustin got up periodically to stoke the wood stove, so the cabin was quite warm overnight, in spite of the very cold temps.

Friday Jan 22:

A few photos of the camp:

Our cabin again:

Up at 7 for coffee, then breakfast at 7:30.  Really good food-- Eric had made fresh cranberry muffins that were some of the best I've had in a long time, as well as pancakes, oatmeal, bacon, and orange slices. We applied ourselves vigorously.

We talked a bit with the folks from the other family (Mom and dad and two teenage girls, all from Brunswick). They were also on their way to the next hut to the south (Little Lyford), although their plan was to spend the night there and then head back north.

Got packed up and hit the trail around 8:30 or so.  Good and cold, probably around 4 or 5 degrees when we got started.

Trail was in good condition, nice and speedy. The route to the south took us a bit to the east, then south for a few miles hugging the base of the mountain, then climbed up for a bit to a plateau, then finally finished up with a big downhill. Rustin and Ethan zoomed ahead for the most part while I brought up the rear. Nice clear weather. We had the trail pretty much to ourselves-- the only person we saw was Chuck, a guy from the previous hut, who was running our bags up to the next hut on his snow mobile. The final section of the trail doubled back towards the north; it was a bit more technical (bumpy/twisty). We got to the next hut, Little Lyford, around noon, and sat for a bit to eat lunch and chat with some of the crew. Total distance for the morning jaunt was about 10 miles.

On the trail:

View to the north, including a peek at Mt Katahdin (probably about 50-60 miles away I think?):

Obligatory selfie:

Outside our cabin at Lyford:

The main lodge at Lyford:

The dinner bell:

At around 1 we decided to go out for another dose, so we suited up and headed out on the "Indian Mountain Circuit" trail. Fairly steep (by cross-country standards) climb up into the hills, with lots of turns and tricky sections. It was nice to be a bit higher up than the other trails in the region.  At one point I looked over at the side of the trail and saw a spot where a hawk or some other bird of prey had killed another bird -- almost nothing left except a few drops of blood and some feathers (must have been pretty hungry). Eventually we made it around the shoulder of Indian Mountain and picked up another ungroomed trail to Horseshoe Pond -- that was some of the nicest skiing of the trip, actually. Lovely minimal trail over soft powdery snow; looked like maybe only 2 or 3 other people had been there. We eventually circled back to the hut -- we decided to bypass the Indian Mountain Circuit on the way back, opting for a trail with somewhat more gradual descents. Total additional mileage around 7, so covered a lot of ground.

At 4pm we hit the sauna (having signed up previously at lunch). It was bit underpowered, so we had to pack the stove with wood and wait for it to come back up to temperature, but after a half hour or so it was going nicely. Terrific to have things like saunas and hot showers after the end of a long day of skiing. After that we relaxed in the hut. The main building has a "library" on the second floor with couches and chairs where you can relax and read -- very nice.

Dinner at the hut was tomato soup, baked salmon, fresh bread, broiled asparagus, and a wild rice pilaf, with strawberry shortcake for dessert (yum), probably the best meal of the trip. Lots more people than the last hut -- dining hall was pretty full, looked like around 25-30 people. We had fun talking with a nice younger couple from Portsmouth who had a lot of interesting camping stories, plus an older retired couple who had been skiing before at the Gaspe' Peninsula in Canada (even more remote and cold than Maine).

Sat Jan 23:

Later breakfast this morning (8am), giving me more time to drink my coffee, read, and write in my journal. Slept a little better last night (decided to use the earplugs). The cabin was a bit noisy with the older generation McIntosh men snoring, people getting up to feed the stove, etc.  I thought that Ethan would be in a good position to be a judge in the snoring contest -- decide once and for all whose late night honking is louder, mine or my brothers. Fortunately for Ethan he is a very sound sleeper, however, and seems to be able to sleep through most of anything, so he wasn't much good at judging the competition. At one point the ladder going up to the top bunk got jostled and fell down with a big crash-- Rustin and I woke up, but Ethan slept through it.

Temp this morning around zero. Pretty stiff from the skiing the day before -- extra stretching needed. Breakfast was eggs + bacon, oatmeal, yum. I talked a bit with the family that we'd met up at West Branch -- they were planning on skiing out to the west to try to locate the wreckage of a B-52 bomber that crashed in the area in 1963 (apparently not too far from where we had been skiing the previous day, maybe a mile or two farther west).

We took a look at the map and decided that we would bypass the first mile or two of the camp-to-camp trail on our way down to the next hut (Gorman), since we'd had already covered it the previous day, so we set out on a neighboring trail.  We made zoomed along and made very good time, although we missed the cutoff that we'd planned on taking (wasn't signed very well) and wound up taking a detour on one of the many snowmobile trails in the area instead. When we did finally connect up with the hut-to-hut trail, it was terrific -- lots of nice curves and up and down sections (mainly down), a lot of fun to ski.  We arrived at Gorman a little early, around 11:10, so we did a short side trip up to the north ("Henderson Brook Trail") to explore the area before lunch. This took us past one of the main snowmobile trails ("Katahdin Iron Works") and along into the woods until the trail became too steep to follow.

Gorman is very nice -- pretty clear that the main lodge been recently renovated/rebuilt. All of the furniture and fittings are very new-looking, although the cabins themselves were a good deal more rustic. We had lunch after our second outing and sacked out for a bit. Ethan decided to stay in the hut and read, while Rustin and I went out for a third tour. I headed back to the west to do a loop north of the lake that included the Long Pond Trail, while Rustin went back north again and found the place where the path hitches up with the Appalachian trail (which runs through the area).  The Long Pond Trail was lovely although somewhat bleak and lonely... once again, we both had another long ski without coming across another soul (this is a good thing, though -- skiing alone in the solitude is unique and wonderful experience). Got back, fed the stove in the cabin, and then hiked back up to the hut for a nice hot shower (very cushy, hard to believe I was in an AMC hut).

Waxing up:

This shot taken on the Katahdin Iron Works trail, one of the big thoroughfares of snowmobilers. A bit bleak.

Interior of Gorman lodge:

Ethan reading:

Gorman again:

Unlike the AMC huts in the White Mountains, this one turned out to serve wine and beer, so I was able to sit and have a micro-brew while reading and writing in my journal. Very civilized (still can't quite get used to the idea); more like a European hut than the ones in NH.

The one casualty of the day appears to have been my camera -- after taking a photo earlier in the afternoon, it seems to have decided that it will no longer boot up properly, ouch. I think I may need to finally replace it.

The hut was pretty full for the evening meal -- there was a big group (a dozen or so) of people with a couple of AMC guides as chaperones who were there, along with the couple from Portsmouth, or group, and a few other assorted hangers-on.

Dinner was turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, and gravy.

After dinner there was a slide presentation by one of the AMC guides who was with the big group, talking about the AMC's "Maine Initiative", e.g. the efforts on the part of the AMC to extend their huts + operations in general into Maine. It was pretty interesting material. I hadn't realized what a big move into Maine the AMC has made -- they've purchased some seventy thousand acres, and they've picked up a whole collection of new huts. Doing this required raising almost fifty million dollars, which is a pretty big deal.

Sunday Jan 24:

Temps around zero in the morning; we got packed up and went in to have breakfast, another excellent meal: cheese grits, sausage, eggs, and scones (yum).

For the ski out to the winter parking lot we decided to take the trail to the south of Long Pond, which was nice. We made very good time in spite of the cold and the slight uphill, so we finished up at the winter parking lot around 11:30 or so (at that point it was up to around 20 degrees, so we were all pretty sweaty). I think it was a bit less than 9 miles on the way out.

The drive home was fairly uneventful -- we ate our packed sandwiches on the road (no need to stop). At around 3 we picked up the Patriots/Broncos game, which was exciting but a bit depressing (not the happiest of games for a car full of Pats fans, oh well). Made it back home by around 4:30, which wasn't too bad.

All in all, it was a terrific trip... fantastic skiing conditions, nice huts with the proper amenities and very good food -- huzzah. Next time hopefully I will be able to convince Amy and Oscar to come along as well.

Couple of Days in Chicago

Lydia is now on the "mod" system at CSW, and between each of the mods there is a break of 3-4 days, usually a long (four-day) weekend. This setup makes it easy to arrange short trips, jaunts, and mini-vacations. After her first mod she did a school-sponsored hiking trip in the White Mountains in NH; this time around I organized a father-daughter trip to Chicago.

We flew out early Thursday morning on Nov 12, then flew back early Sunday morning on the 15th, so we had a few days to explore and take in the sights. Weather was cool/cold but not really freezing, so it was still nice to be outside.

Our hotel was the Chicago Marriott "Magnificent Mile", a big hotel right smack in the so-called "magnificent mile" shopping district that runs north-south along Michigan avenue.  Our room was small but serviceable, way up on the 34th floor (big building).  Arrived around 12, then grabbed a quick bite at a local sandwich place ("Doc B's") and then spent time walking around the neighborhood, exploring and doing a little shopping.

Photos from our walk around:

This was a cool-looking old building designed to look like a mosque or middle-eastern temple of some sort (complete with onion domes -- bet you won't see too many similar buildings being constructed today). It currently houses a Bloomingdale's store (weird).

From the shop window of the Museum of Contemporary Art -- yes, I most definitely need to own a shiny golden pig sculpture.

Outside the MOCA:

This odd-looking building is actually part of an old water-pumping station. Very important to include turrets and battlements when building pumping stations.

Shopping:

View from the hotel room looking west:

We spent some time relaxing in the hotel room, then headed our around 5:15 to have dinner.

Dinner at Tanta, a Peruvian restaurant. Medium-sized place, very dark, sizable bar with many hip-looking your couples and rather loud disco beat. The food was good but very rich (not much in the "big plate of steamed veggies" dept). The appetizers were quite tasty, including grilled octopus.

After wrapping up there we took the subway a few stops down to South Dearborn street to attend a taping of the NPR show "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me", for which I had bought tickets well in advance.

Seeing WWDTM is a slightly odd experience -- you get off the subway and walk over to this enormous bank building, which is mostly locked up (since it is a bank after all, and it's 7pm), but you go in the side entrance and then way down into the basement of the building (sub-basement in fact, sort of bunker-like). The crowd was funny to watch-- I'm not sure how to describe it, but they just looked incredibly nerdy/wonky NPR-ish. Of course we were all clutching our tickets and waiting for someone to carefully check them, but it was all basically on the honor system (there are assigned seats, however). The auditorium was comfy, we had a decent view of the stage and could hear everything just fine. The stage:



Guests were Roxanne Roberts (who looks older in real life), Brian Babylon, and Maz Jobrani (they are very funny guys in the flesh, especially Brian, whose brain works in really bizarre ways, going off on riffs and tangents). The show seemed to be custom-designed just for me -- it had a section featuring questions about giant squid (hah) and a person dialing in from Cleveland TN (he had to explain where it was, of course).  We had a good time and got a lot of good laughs in. Subway back afterwards (it is nice to be in a city with good public transport).

On Friday we had breakfast at the hotel restaurant (that actually turned out to be something of a strategic mistake -- possibly the most expensive breakfast I've had in a long time, considering what we ordered), then walked down Michigan Ave to catch an architectural tour.

Weather was chilly and windy -- I was glad that I had worn my sweater and warmest hat (long underwear would have been nice too, but I didn't actually bring any).

For the tour you get onto a boat with a big open deck and chairs lined up on top, then you cruise down the Chicago river while the docent tells you about the various buildings. I enjoyed it thoroughly; hearing about the history of the city and how the architecture evolved was pretty cool. We did wind up going down below to grab a cup of hot chocolate and defrost for a bit partway through, but for most of the tour we stayed up top. Here is a shot of our tour guide:

The sides of the river have just about everything you can imagine -- grim and functional-looking warehouse-like buildings, active construction sites, giant skyscrapers, ritzy-looking townhouses, you name it. Here is a recent addition bearing the Trump label:

Selfie:

This odd-looking building was designed by someone famous -- our tour guide said that the architect "liked triangles":

A townhouse type arrangement:

Interesting looking building:

Cool building designed by Bertrand Goldberg, also the guy who designed the Marina City complex:

Sears tower (now the Ellis building I believe):

View looking back towards downtown from the spot where the river joins up with the lake:

After the tour we decided that we would walk down to the Chicago Art Institute, have lunch in the area, and then take in the museum. We at at "Cosi", a local sandwich place.

Some photos of the giant mirrored coffee bean (the "Cloud Gate") -- a favorite of mine:

The museum was fun. We could have spent all day there-- it is a big collection. The parts we visited included an exhibit on the work of the architect David Adjaye (that was pretty neat), the impressionists section (Monet, Gaugin, Toulouse-Lautrec and others), some contemporary photography, and the Greek and Roman sections. Entryway:

From the David Adjaye section:

They had a small "Arts and Crafts" section, including some Charles Rennie Mackintosh works:

The Greco-Roman section:

From the impressionists:

After our itinerary through the museum we made our way on foot back up to the hotel and spent a couple of hours relaxing -- at that point we were a bit worn out from all the to-ings and fro-ings.

Lydia and I put our heads together and decided that for dinner we wanted a meal that would be mostly vegetables, so I went down to the hotel lobby and quizzed the concierge to ask for suggestions. His suggestions were not especially helpful, so I went back and resorted to Google for a bit; we finally settled on a local Chinese place, Lao Sze Chuan. It turned out to be a good pick -- the vegetables (stir-fried spinach with garlic, stir-fried pea-pod stems) were superb and perfectly cooked. Yum.

On Saturday morning we had lunch at a local Whole Foods (better food than the hotel restaurant and at about 1/5 the price) and then hung out in in the hotel room for a while. A bit later on in the morning we walked north to the local Barnes and Noble to do some book shopping, then headed back to have a pizza lunch. At 1pm we headed off to do a bicycle tour that I had arranged for us.

We started off not far from the hotel, then biked north through Streeterville (which has a very colorful history), up through the Gold Coast neighborhood, into Old Town, and then east into Lincoln Park, where we stopped at the zoo for a bit. After that we biked back along the shore to the rental place. It was fun, a bit on the slow side (this is my typical complaint about group bike tours), but it was a fine day, nice to be outside.

Chicago skyline from Lincoln Park:

The bikers:

Our bikes had names... ?

More shots from along the shore:

For dinner our plan was to eat at Avec, a nouveau-middle-eastern place that had been written up well in Yelp and Zagat. The one wrinkle is that they don't take reservations, so we decided we would try to show up a bit on the early side -- we hustled to get ready after getting back from the bike ride, since we didn't arrive back until a bit before 4:30.

We had good timing on the subway connections and got there around 5pm. The place is in a sort of warehouse-ish district to the west of the main loop (subway goes over the river), not much else there. The other thing about it is that it is quite small -- Lydia's characterization was "shipping container", which is really pretty close to the truth. It's a sort of wood-paneled rectangular room with bench-like tables on one side and the bar/kitchen on the other side, without a lot of room to maneuver.

We had good luck: a table had just opened up when we arrived so we didn't have to wait at all (hah!). Your seating choices are either A) at the bar, or B) communal seating along the bench/table thing. Being only two people was a big help I think.

We ordered four dishes -- Lydia picked a green salad and the market whole roasted fish; I ordered the kale "panzanella" (whatever that is) appetizer and a chicken main. The dishes came one after the other -- they don't try to bring them out at the same time (we shared everything).

The green salad was really nice -- very cool and refreshing. Mild yoghurt-ish dressing, greens, very thinly sliced radishes, potatoes, and fennel, then these little flavorful black bits which I think were sun-cured olives that had been diced and then roasted or toasted in some way.

The kale dish was yummy (one review I read described it as "insanely good"); it had grilled haloumi cheese, some sort of crouton, flecks of spicy red pepper, the kale itself (which was very green and crunchy, almost crispy, not sure what they did to it), and a smattering of onions + some sort pickled raisin (not to sure how to describe it). Super tasty.

The chicken came next; it was a roast half chicken with a sort of riff on fatoush -- crispy bits of bread, frisee, a spicy red pepper sauce, and these sort of spicy cucumbers (or maybe squash, couldn't tell). Also delicious...

The fish came last, it was a whole sea bass that had been roasted and the garnished with a mix of greens (mint, parsley, cilantro), currants, pickled ginger (just like the stuff you get at sushi places) and sauteed onions. It was not quite as awesome as the other dishes but still quite good.

Lydia had a chocolate thing for dessert: it was a sort of rectangular chocolate truffle brick with a ball of cardamom/curry ice cream.

It was a really nice meal, and the prices were extremely reasonable (normally for that sort of food in a big city I would have expected to pay at least twice as much).  On the way out the door there was a big line of people waiting, so I think we timed it just right.

We thought for a bit about going out to the movies after that, but we were tired from the biking and the running around, so we decided to "veg out" for the evening.

On Sunday morning we were up early -- took the subway back out to the airport to make our way home. It was a nice trip, I think about the right length and level of "scheduled activity".  Lydia remarked on the subway that we had managed to spend the entire trip without ever getting into a car (also kind of cool...).