Riverbend
Campground, near Leeds
Tuesday,
21 August 2018
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| today's route |
I find these days of having limited
access to wifi is becoming disorienting – not being able to check
the weather or the news or add to my blog – it’s a little like
when you’re on a diet and the only thing you can think about is
what you can’t have. Because of that fuzziness, I didn’t plan on
much of any sightseeing today, and when it turned out that the next
campground – who promised me a wifi signal – wasn’t far from
the previous one, I decided to drive around these country roads and
see some of the many lakes in this region.
But first, I went back to Augusta to
do a little shopping. I’ve been becoming increasingly desperate to
get a 2nd pair of pants because the ones I’ve got were
secondhand to start with and now have huge holes in both legs. I
realize that’s completely in style these days, but it’s been a
while since I was young enough to be in style, plus I keep putting my
foot in the holes when I’m putting them on. I was left with only 2
pairs after that ghastly accident with the sewage hose this past
February when I threw away my 3rd pair.
I found a very helpful young woman in
Target who took on the challenge of trying to find a pair of
non-stylish (i.e. not slim leg) jeans and was pleased when I found
them in the men’s section. Said she had the same problem trying to
find khaki pants for work with pockets – women’s slacks not
having pockets, as I’ve railed against for years.
After that I went a few stores down to
BestBuy, looking for DVDs, and learned they have a new policy. I
guess they think their clientele are only interested in the latest
thing, so almost all their ordinary DVDs were in a serious sale bin,
and the only ones on the shelf were either BlueRay or 4G (I think
that’s what they said) – anyway, not something I wanted to pay
for. Too bad for me.
Driving
note: Maine is real big on what they
call an “alternate
merge.” As long as people really do
what they’re supposed to do, it must work better than those
one-lane-ending-so-merge-into-the-other
instructions. And so far I haven’t seen anybody having problems
with them. I saw a few of these signs in Vermont, more in New
Hampshire, but Maine seems to go in for them in a big way. To get this photo, I went online and learned they're called late merge or zipper merge and are starting to be used in all but 2 states (per San Antonio DOT blog).
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| note the ladder |
This photo is Lake Maranacook. I stopped at a boat landing area and, once again, displayed my
tendency to have problems trying to back up. This time I backed into
one of those tallish yellow poles governments put up to stop people
from going places they don’t want them to go. Chipped a little
yellow paint but otherwise the pole was fine. Not so my little RV. I’m noticing a trend: most of my damage seems to
be happening in the right rear corner area. This should tell me
something. (Wonder if it will.)
In the last few days I’ve noticed a
few maples starting to change colors, and today I saw a whole tree’s
worth. But I’m not sure it’s because winter’s already coming
as much as maybe stress, because everybody keeps telling me how badly
they need rain here.
I
think this photo is of Echo Lake, based on where I seem to be on the
map. All these lakes are pretty.
I
passed an enormous yard
full of logs and suddenly realized all of them and all the logs I’ve
seen on trucks are all the same size and must be coming from tree
farms. I’ve heard that the northwest part of Maine that seems to
have only private roads in it is full of logging operations. I
wonder if the state of Maine decided to lease – or sell? - a huge
chunk of the state to tree companies. Well, I still love paper –
especially paper towels and toilet paper – so I guess I can’t
complain. And tree farms are better than cutting down forests.
I
heard on Maine Public Radio (they’ve just got the one public radio
station that’s rebroadcast from different stations – Vermont and
New Hampshire do the same) that Maine’s lakes are much warmer than
usual and their
average surface temperature this summer is 80°. The
reason this matters, biologists
say,
is the usually cool water keeps Maine lakes much clearer of algae
than the lakes in other states, but
that seems to be changing this year. Biologists are hoping this
isn’t a trend and worry about climate change, because the changing
biota is/are bad for fishing and swimming and other water sports.
I passed a lot of cornfields today. And the corn is looking pretty far along and is starting to show up
in farm stands along the road.
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