Massena, NY to Fair Haven, NY

The highlight of the day was the Frederick Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, New York, on the shore of Lake Ontario.  I almost missed it because I got there before it opened and headed down the road.  But I turned back and I'm glad I did.  Why is it is Ogdensburg when Remington is known for his paintings and bronzes depicting the 19th Century West?  Because he grew up in Ogdensburg and returned here in his 30s before his death at age 39.

A 1988 National Geographic article that I bought in the gift shop says: "He and his contemporary, Charley Russell, created our visual myths of the Old West."  In Remington's case, its a romantic myth.  (Russell's museum is in Great Falls, Montana, and is on my itinerary).  The article goes on, "Through their works Easterners . . . would view the frontier to the West not as an empty, uncivilized place but as a land of limitless opportunity and freedom. . . .  (T)he Western experience began to represent something uniquely American."

Remington, though a son of wealth, financed his western excursions starting in 1881 by sketching or painting illustrations for magazines and books.  These included 90 illustrations for Theodore Roosevelt's Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail.  His most famous painting depicts the charge of Roosevelt's Rough Riders up San Juan Hill.

Remington's 1898
'Charge of the Rough Riders on San Juan Hill'
On Display at Remington Art Museum

While Remington was present at the battlefield, he did not observe the charge.  He composed the picture from the recollections of others who were present.

Remington is best known today for his 22 bronze sculptures, which he started composing in 1896 and worked on until his death in 1909.  Ronald Reagan had two of them in the Oval Office while he was president, "The Bronco Buster" and "The Rattlesnake."  Remington's best-known bronze is "The Bronco Buster," which is on display in the Art Museum. Several bronzes were cast from the wax model. The one in the Oval Office was a gift by Remington to Theodore Roosevelt.  A picture of the bronze in the museum is below:

Remington's 'The Bronco Buster'

You can buy a full-size bronze replica of it from the F&R Bronze Company for $600.

My favorite bronze is 'Coming Through the Rye,' which features four cowboys on horses at a gallop.  The horse on the left has all four feet in the air.  From the National Geographic article:  "Remington learned to depict horses accurately and tried 'to paint running horses so you would feel the details and not see them.'  He wanted for his epitaph: 'He Knew the Horse.'"  Here are two views of 'Rye':

Remington's 'Coming Through the Rye'

Remington's 'Coming Through the Rye'

A couple of his paintings I like have a completely different flavor:

Remington's 'Breaking Up the Ice in Spring'

Remington's 'Howl of the Weather'

I like the muted colors and the dreamy overcast skies.  They are somewhat different and more artsy that most of his paintings.

One last bronze:

Remington's 'Outlaw'

Mileage: 196.  Cumulative mileage: 5,884

Burlington, VT to Massena, NY

I visited the Ethan Allen homestead just North of Burlington, Vermont.  He actually lived there only the last two years of his life, 1787 to 1789, which was after he had won fame and a touch of infamy. 

Ethan Allen’s fame was as the leader of the Vermont Green Mountain Boys, which as a force took from the British in 1775 both Fort Ticonderoga and the destroyed redoubt at Crown Point.  Neither involved much of a fight, but somebody had to do it.  Actually, Col. Benedict Arnold had shown up before the actions without any troops and demanded that he was in charge, based on a mandate from the Continental Congress.  The Green Mountain Boys took a vote and decided they would only fight under Allen or else they would go home.  And so Allen led them.  While the positions on Lake Champlain were considered strategically important, the major impact of their seizure was the cannon that were captured.  In 1777 these cannon were transported to the hills overlooking Boston and were used to raise the British siege on that city.

Allen’s infamy derived from his attempts in 1781-82 to negotiate with the British for Vermont to become a British province.  These efforts ended after the British were defeated at Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris was signed.  But that story is a little complicated.  It started with a dispute over whether Vermont in colonial times was a part of New Hampshire or of New York.  Apparently both colonies had issued titles to land in Vermont.  New Hampshire had starting issuing its titles in 1750.  The Allen brothers and others with them held New Hampshire titles.  In 1764, King George III recognized Vermont as being a part of New York.  The Green Mountain Boys were actually formed in 1770 to defend the New Hampshire titles, with little success prior to the Revolution.  Part of Allen’s scheme in 1782 was to have the British crown recognize the New Hampshire titles as a condition of British provincial status.

 Despite Allen’s efforts on behalf of the American’s cause in 1775, the Continental Congress had not been very receptive to the efforts by Vermonters to be included as a separate entity.  In fact, Vermont declared itself an independent republic in 1777.  In 1778, it petitioned Congress to become a state, but no action was taken by Congress.  Only in 1791 did Vermont become the 14^th state.

It may be argued that Allen’s behavior was neither patriotic nor treasonous.  He and the Green Mountain Boys were motivated throughout the colonial and revolutionary periods by the desire to establish and maintain their property claims.  They wanted independence from New York.  Eventually, after Ethan Allen had died, they got it.

Reconstruction of Ethan Allen Homestead
Burlington, Vermont

I also took a sidetrip on an island in upper Lake Champlain to view a piece of the oldest diverse fossil reef in the world.  On Isle La Motte, Vermont, are quarries of dark rocks that have been mined since the early 19th century.  These rocks are an exposed part of the Chazy Reef, a thousand-mile formation believed to extend from Montreal to Tennessee.  The reef formed nearly 500 million years ago in a shallow tropical sea at the equator.  Due to plate tectonics, the reef has drifted to its present position.  Though some coral skeletons are found among the fossils, it is not a coral reef.  Rather, it is made of an extensive collection of fossils including bryozoa, stromatolites, stromatoporoids, sponges and algae. The resulting limestone has been compressed to a marble-like consistency.  Because traditionally all rock, except granite, that produced a polished finish suitable for building applications has been called "marble," the quarries' product was marketed as "Black Marble."  This rock has been incorporated into the Vermont State House, Radio City Music Hall, and the National Gallery of Art.

The Isle La Motte preserves have the designation of National Natural Landmarks, but because of their remove location and limited financial support, they are not much visited.  I wandered around the Fisk Quarry Preserve, which is a 20-acre site at which mining activity stopped in the 1920s.  Here are a couple of pictures.

Chazy Reef Dark Limestone
In Fisk Quarry Preserve

View of Fisk Quarry Preserve
Isle La Motte, Vermont

Mileage: 183.  Cumulative mileage: 5,688.

Jackman, ME to Burlington, VT

This was a pleasant day of driving through New England.  I have spent twelve days passing back and forth across the northern half of this region.  I have drawn no conclusion, and I didn't expect to.  I just wanted to experience the area for all of its worth.

Along the way today I visited my second unusual bridge in Maine.  The first was the cribstone bridge between Orr Island and Bailey Island in the Mid-Coast Region.  This second bridge was in New Portland, and is a cable suspension bridge called the Wire Bridge.  It was completed in 1866, and looks like a miniature version of the Brooklyn Bridge, which was built seven years later.  Here it is:

Wire Bridge Over Carrabassett River

New Portland, Maine

Wire Bridge Over Carrabassett River

New Portland, Maine

New Portland got its name on account of being given to the residents of Portland (formerly Falmouth), Maine, as compensation for losses suffered at the hands on the British in 1775.

The Bailey Island bridge is the only cribstone bridge in the world.  The cribstone design allows tidal waters to pass through the bridge, thereby greatly reducing the effect the flow would have on boats passing through the channel under the bridge.

Cribstone Bridge Between

Orr Island and Bailey Island, Maine

Mileage: 328.  Cumulative mileage: 5,505

St.-Jacques, NB to Jackman, ME

This was the return day on my trip to the northeastern-most corner of the USA.  I saw more trees and a lot of potato fields.

A word to all wise Floridians:  If you go through the US border checkpoint at Matawaska, Maine, you can expect to be pulled over for the full treatment.  It happened to Judge Laura Melvin a few days ago and it happened to me.  The guard only asked me a couple of questions, and then her mic said, "do you see the license?"  She replied yes and told me to pull behind the building.  It wasn't bad; it just took a while.  Then a few miles down the road I got a call that I had left my camera in the motel room.  Do I go back through two more border crossings or just chuck it on the camera?  Does a bear stink up the woods?  I went for the camera.  Fortunately, when I came back through the Matawaska checkpoint the guards remembered me and waived me through.

Mileage: 353.  Cumulative mileage: 5,177.

Baxter State Park, ME to St.-Jacques, NB

Today was part of a two-day jaunt to the northeastern-most corner of the USA.  I saw a lot of trees and not much else.

Mileage: 200.  Cumulative mileage: 4,824.

Baxter State Park, ME

This was a day I set aside exclusively for hiking.  Granted, my idea of hiking is not with full regalia of boots, poles, ropes and pitons.  It’s more of a stroll over some obstacles like rocks and tree limbs, with an occasional bog to work around. 

Baxter State Park in Maine is a hiking mecca.  For one thing, it is the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.  It is so popular that to minimize environmental impact, the number of day hikers is strictly limited, and is handled on a first-come, first-serve basis.  People start arriving at 5 AM to get in when the park opens at 7 AM.  To get around this you do what I did, which is to camp overnight.  That’s limited too, and I had to make a reservation (and pay) two months ago to be sure of a tent site.  Its not bad, no potable water, no electricity, no showers, but there are vault toilets.

The hike I took was about three miles long around two ponds---that’s apparently what they call a small lake.  There are supposed to be moose to be seen in the area I covered, but I was too noisy and too impatient to wait them out, so no moose was sighted by me.  Others on the trail claimed to have seen them, and even described them in anatomical detail.  Could they have merely memorized the exhibit at the Museum of Natural History?

Baxter State Park has an interesting history.  Percival Baxter first saw the area in 1903 and he formed a life-long attachment to it.  When he was governor of Maine in the 1920s he tried to get the legislature to buy the land.  When the legislature refused, he bought the land himself.  He later donated it to the state with strict limitations on its use.  Those limitations still govern the park today.

The main feature of the park is a series of peaks that are part of the Appalachian Range, which were formed initially by volcanic activity 450 million years ago, and then were uplifted and reformed by the collision of the Acadian plate 350 to 400 million years ago.  Subsequent erosion, particularly from Ice Age glaciers, has worn down the peaks to their present elevation of 4,000 to 5,500 feet.  Most of the rock in this area is granite, which is the result of the volcanic activity.  Granite is igneous (volcanic) rock that relatively speaking didn’t get very hot.  It is also the most resilient to erosion of the igneous rocks.  But where there is granite, as here in Baxter State Park, there is usually a lot of it.

Moose Country, Baxter State Park

Mountain Silhouette, Baxter State Park

Mileage: 0

Cobscook Bay State Park, ME to Baxter State Park, ME

I’m off to Machias Seal Island to see the puffin! But puffin are birds, they’re not seals.  Where are the seals?  They are nearby on Gull Rock.  Where are the gulls?  Everywhere.

I leave the harbor at Cutler, Maine, with six other adventurers, a boat captain, Andy, and his helper, Tyler.  Andy looks like his name sounds, an intrepid spirit with long blond hair.  He has been running folk out to Seal Island to see the puffins for 24 years.    Tyler looks like a young Matt Damon.  He is both competent and articulate.  I ask him where he goes to college.  He tells me he is 16. 

I am different from the other adventurers:  my camera lens only extends four inches, and its not encased in camouflage wrappings.  I have stepped into another world---that of the bird people, or birders.  They are all quiet and they all have cameras with lenses a foot to a foot and a half long.  They are selective:  they only take pictures of birds, particularly ones in flight.  When they aren’t taking pictures of birds or looking for birds to photograph, they cup their hands around their eyes, get real close to the four-inch-diagonal screen on the backs of their cameras, and review their pictures.

Puffins and razorbills and mirs are all auks.  They are colonizing birds, which is why there are six thousand of them on this island, which is a granite outcrop of  20 acres located in the Bay of Fundy about nine miles off the Maine coast.

We can’t get ashore because the swells are too high, which is okay by me.  I’m here for the boat ride, which is real nice.  The sky is clear and there is only a slight wind.  And I am able to observe both the birds and the birders.

Captain Andy fills us in about the status of the island.  The British put a lighthouse on it in the 1830s.  Canada now maintains the lighthouse and has done so continuously since it acquired dominion status.  The United States and Canada dispute the sovereignty of the island.  The United States claims it because it is only nine miles from the US coastline. Its also less than twelve miles from the nearest Canadian territory, Grand Manon Island, New Brunswick.  Canada also claims it on the basis of 180 years of continuous possession.  To maintain that possession, Canada continues to man the lighthouse with two lighthouse keepers.  Since most lighthouses today are operated automatically and without lighthouse keepers, this is an expensive undertaking.  So far as I know, no one has held a preferential election among the island’s true historical residents, the auks.

Mileage:  255.  Cumulative mileage: 4,624

Here are some of my pictures.  There are some more on the Miscellany page.

Atlantic or Common Puffin

Razorbill

They Sit Up Like Penguins

Cobscook Bay State Park, ME

Roosevelt Campobello International Park is located on Canadian soil just over the international border from Lubec, Maine, the easternmost town in the United States.  It is supposedly the only international park in the world.  Its historical significance is based on its becoming a resort for rich New Yorkers in the 1880s, who included the parents of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the longest-serving president of the United States.  To give the park an international flavor, there are exhibits in the visitors center of cooperation and friendship between Canada and the United States.  But this park is a celebration of FDR’s life.

FDR came here for the first time as a one-year-old, and he spent most of his summers here while he was growing up.  After he married, he and Eleanor continued to come and brought their children.  His mother bought him a “cottage” next door to hers in 1905.  Here is a picture of FDR’s house.  He didn’t own it himself until his mother died in 1941.

FDR's Cottage
On Campobello Island

In 1921, while at Campobello, Roosevelt contracted a high fever and within a few days has lost the use of his legs.  He had polio.  Though he tried various forms of physical therapy, he never regained the use of his legs.  To make himself as mobile as possible, he developed tremendous upper-body strength, used leg braces, and stood by using a cane and the arm of a relative or attendant.

One of FDR's Porkpie Hats
On Display in His Cottage

Mileage: 106.  Cumulative mileage: 4,369.

Bar Harbor, ME to Cobscook Bay State Park, ME

I spent most of the day at Acadia National Park.  Its a lot like the rest of the Mid-Coast region of Maine, but without all the houses.  The most prominent feature is Cadillac Mountain, which has a summit of 1,528 feet and no trees at the top.  I doubt that its above the treeline, so it must be the fact that its solid granite.  Here is the view of Bar Harbor from the summit:

View from Cadillac Mountain
Of Bar Harbor and Vicinity

Acadia National Park has four parts.  The primary part, which includes Cadillac Mountain, is on Mount Desert (pronounced de-SERT) Island.  The other parts are the Isle au Haut, part of Baker Island, and the Schootic Peninsula on the mainland.  The acquisition of the Schootic Peninsula portion included a strange condition.  The couple who owned it were English, and they took exception to the park's original name, which was Lafayette National Park.  So Congress changed the name to Acadia National Park and the couple conveyed their property.

I traveled to Schootic Point on the Schootic Peninsula to see what the fuss was about.  I did come upon an interesting feature.  Running through the granite at the seashore were gabbro dikes (I originally called them basalt).  This indicated that volcanic activity had pushed flowing magna into crevices in the granite.  Dikes like these are generally at the vertical or a large acute angle.  These deposits, as seen below, are roughly horizontal.  All this means is that after the dikes had cooled and solidified, they and the granite were subject to an upheaval that turned them on their side.

Gabbro Dike in Granite
At Schootic Point

Gabbro Dike in Granite
At Schootic Point

Mileage: 146.  Cumulative mileage: 4,263

Freeport, ME to Bar Harbor, ME

I did a lot today:

The Maine Maritime Museum in Bath.  It is centered around an old wooden shipbuilding operation that went out of business 80 years ago.  Actually, the last wooden schooner was built in Bath in 1920.  It has added some other maritime features, including a collection of small boats used in Maine waters, and an exhibit on the Cold War US Navy.  I particularly liked a short movie on the lobster industry and lobster fishermen.

Here was my favorite display:

This is a copper weather vane that was found in a barn.  No one knows who made it.  No one knows when it was made, though it was probably sometime in the 19th century.  With that dearth of information, if it were a bit older it would probably be treated as an archaeological find.

And how about this for an arcane object:

That is the bow of the wooden clipper ship Snow Squall that was underwater for 118 years.  It had run aground off of Cape Horn, and was condemned and sunk off the Falkland Islands in 1864.  It was brought up in 1982.  Now it sits in a garage by itself at the museum in Bath.

The Coastal Maine Botanical Garden.  This is a new garden, having opened in 2007.  It is a very ambitious garden.  They used landscape designers and professional landscape installers on contract to do the work.  It has many crowd-drawing features, and as a result, the parking lots were packed.  It has a scent garden that is about five times larger than the one I saw at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis.  It has a very large children's garden complete with as much interactive stuff as you can put in a garden.  It has a rose arbor and a meditation garden and an event lawn.  And it has room to add a lot more.

Here are some views of the scent garden:

There are pictures of three varieties of spruce trees on the Miscellany page.

This professionally-done garden is exquisite and it is obviously a crowd-pleaser.  But there is also something to be said about a volunteer-driven botanical garden.  I am thinking of the much smaller garden near San Luis Obispo, California.  What attracts me to that garden is that it has a theme:  to gather plants from all of the Mediterranean climates around the world.  Each plant tells a story and the entire garden tells a story. Perhaps as the Coastal Maine garden matures it will develop its own story.

Visit with Herb and Cathy.  Julie's brother Herb and his wife Cathy have been coming to the Maine coast every summer for at least a dozen years.  They bought a house on Thomaston Island three years ago.  They live next door to a lobster factory, which is where the lobster fishermen bring their catch.  Up to 100 lobster boats anchor in the bay.  I spent four very pleasant hours visiting with them, and they treated me to a meal of steamed lobster, oven roasted potatoes and salad.  "Simple fare", as they say.  We're all used to live Maine lobster, but there is something especially sweet and succulent about eating a lobster that was in its ocean home only a few hours ago.  Thanks, folks, for the treat and the conversation.

Herb and Cathy's House

Their View

Herb and Friend

At 10 PM I auto-trekked into Bar Harbor.

 Mileage: 183.  Cumulative mileage: 4,117.