Maine Part 16: Portland and the Tail End of the Smoke

 

Eastern Promenade from Munjoy Hill, Portland, ME

18 June 2023

Jack and I are creatures of habit. We find hotels we like and keep going back. It saves time and trouble. In Portland, we stay at a Holiday Inn. It's on a hill across from the art museum and a short walk to Old Port. It costs less than the hotels in the middle of everything, it's easier to get to, and it has better rooms.

We arrived late in the afternoon and walked around Old Port for a while.

Those are condos on the right. I wouldn't. Would you?

I mean, they don't get hurrincanes now, but...

We met up with a friend of Jack's for dinner. 

The next day, still under clouds, we walked around the city some more. Jack wanted to get to all the bookstores. A bird pooped on Jack's shirt before we got to the last one. He went back to the hotel to clean up while I went north to Munjoy Hill. We had plans to meet another friend at noon, so I only had half an hour to get all the way up there and back. 

I hastily took a couple of pictures.

The houses up here go for millions of dollars. For people who live here, every trip ends by walking or driving uphill. 

I turned around. To the south, clouds were threatening.

I was late getting back. I texted Jack to meet me in the lobby. I had time to dash into the bathroom to wipe away sweat. Then we got in the car and drove off the peninsula to meet his friend at a large Italian restaurant at the edge of the city. 

Jack knows this guy from his bibliophile club, which meets online for Friday happy hours. This was the first time they'd seen each other in meatspace. Within ten minutes, we figured out that he was the previous owner of the house my boss lives in. Now I had a story to bring back to work that might strip a few gears.

We went back to his house. The neigborhood could have been anywhere in New Jersey. Off the bay and on high ground, they didn't have to worry about floods the way people in the center of Portland do. Speaking of floods, he and his wife had considered buying one of those portside condos until they found out that the parking area is under water three months out of the year. 

I've already ruled out anything on the peninsula. I'm not living anywhere that has "coastal evacuation route" signs posted on roadsides.

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped into a beer distributor we'd passed on our way over. I found more Allagash Coolship and another Allagash sour. Jack put a pin in the map so we'd remember it next time. We also went to the bookstore we'd missed in the morning. I found a parking space across from the store. I'm sure it was a fluke.

By the time we returned to the hotel, it was too late to walk to Old Port before our dinner reservations. We chilled in the room instead.

Earlier in the day, word had been coming from our friends back home. The sky was yellow, orange, apocalyptic, purple on the hazard scale, full of the Quebec smoke that our friendly cloud mass was protecting us from. When I saw this, I was less disappointed by the Bar Harbor weather. Those fretful porpentines were protecting me!

Tuesday had been bad. Today was going to be worse.

From the west, the sun poked through the clouds. We hadn't seen the sun since it rose through the haze on June 3. 

On her drive home from work, one of my colleagues sent me this, a photo of the sky over Saint Michael's Preserve in Hopwell. Seward Johnson's "The Awakening" looks especially sinister here.

Another friend had taken a picture of the Delaware River from one of the pedestrian bridges.

The air quality was yikes.

In Portland we had a cloudy sunset.

We ate upstairs at a restaurant with windows all the way up. We could see the storm coming and watched the rain pour down. It let up before we left, so we decided that we should get ice cream one more time.

While we were in line, another couple there recognized us from the Abbe Museum on Sunday. They, too, were on their way back to New Jersey. 

When we left the next morning, we were under clouds until we reached New Hampshire. After that, we could see the air, a pale yellow haze over everything. As we got closer to New York, it got worse. On the Tappan Zee bridge (that's what I'll always call it, damnit), the view was white reflecting on silver-white. 

Jack had fun calling up airnow.gov. It became a contest between home and wherever we were at the time. Eventually the numbers converged around 130, "unhealthy for sensitive groups." By the time we pulled into our driveway, things had improved enough that we went food shopping without masks. We'd kept the house sealed up, too, which was good. Except in one room that I'd closed off from the cats. I'd forgotten to close a window that was open a crack. Maybe it was all in my mind, but the room did smell a little like smoke.

Okay. That's that for this year's photo dump. We now return to our regularly scheduled blogging.

Maine Part 15: Schooner Head and Seal Harbor

Wet Cormorants in Frenchman Bay

18 June 2023

The cloud mass that settled over Maine had no intention of leaving. The day we checked out was the same as the day before.

By now I'd figured out that I could guess the wind and rain forecast by whether or not the Margaret Todd was still anchored in the bay, away from her dock. Bar Harbor was looking at another week of this.

Tubby the maintenance raft was still out there too.

As was the pilot boat. 

There were a handful of floating docks in the bay to the east of the harbor. The gulls and cormorants clearly favored one over the others, although not always the same one.

Before we checked out, I posted my usual "anon, fretful porpentines" photos, this time adding that they owed me days of good weather.

I wasn't aware at the time that the cloud mass settled over Maine was the one thing keeping us from breathing the smoke from the 400-odd fires burning in Quebec. 

Before we left the island, we drove to Schooner Head, which is becoming the thing I do each time we leave. Schooner Head is south; the road off the island is north. We weren't in a hurry to get to Portland, though. Jack stayed in the car while I walked down the path in a drizzle.

That's a house on the point over there. 

The closest view of the Egg Rock lighthouse is from here.

That's a raindrop on the lens to the left of the treetop.

Another raindrop ruined this picture.

There's a raindrop center left.

Instead of doubling back, we drove farther south to cover the part of the island I'd missed during yesterday's drive. I stopped for a few minutes at Seal Harbor.

We circled north again, taking the road from Northeast Harbor that I'd turned the wrong way on the day before. 

We stopped at Global Beverage in Ellsworth because they're the only ones who regularly stock the only sour beer I like: Allagash Coolship. 

Then we drove on, in and out of rain, to Portland.