A good send off from Sandy.

The last three days in America were meant to be spent in New York. Friends travelling with us had arranged for three nights with their relatives in central Manhattan. As it turned out, our friends flew home on time and we were unexpected guests for five more days. Thanks to Hurricane Sandy our plane was cancelled at the last minute on the Sunday, and the first flight we could bag was on the following Friday.

This was the day before Sandy arrived.

We threw ourselves on the mercy of our new acquaintances and they responded with fantastic hospitality and good grace, so thank you Sharon and Paul Blackman. We felt worse imposing on them than they did having strangers in their home. They also had friends lodging with them who lived in lower Manhattan and had lost their power supply, so it was a social week. But we had plenty of time to visit the sights and catch a show.

Our last Frank Lloyd Wright building.

The hurricane came and went, and we hardly noticed its passing. However, walking down Manhattan we found that others weren't so fortunate. Marinas were damaged, cranes toppled, electricity cut off, houses lost their walls and subways were inundated by the sea. We felt extremely lucky…

These were on the day after Sandy had paid a visit.

We loved walking the streets getting a feel for this vibrant city. Of all the places we'd visited, we felt this was the one we could live in. Maybe it was the cosmopolitan mix of nations, or the energy on the streets, whatever it was there was a feeling of open minded acceptance that we missed in small town America. It felt almost European in outlook, acknowledging that there was a world out there that wasn't necessarily threatening.

Three months travelling the lesser known parts of North-East America has  been a wonderful education. By learning America's history first hand, talking to hundreds of people and seeing for ourselves how ordinary folk live their lives, we both feel we have a much better understanding of what makes Americans tick.

It's still a relatively young country, and we reckon their national mood reflects this. A couple of hundred years ago when Britain was the most powerful nation on Earth we built numerous monuments to our heroes. We had total confidence in our power. We believed we were a civilising force for good around the world. We proudly flew the national flag outside our homes and stood solemnly when the National Anthem was playing. This is how Americans are today.

Overwhelmingly, any US citizen will happily state that they're proud to be American.

Diane and I aren't proud to be English, but we are both very grateful.

The Battle for the Nation.

The impressive Pennsylvania Memorial.

Gettysburg is famous as the site of the biggest battle of the American Civil War, fought over three days. More men died in this battle than in any other - around  50,000 -  and the defeat of Robert E. Lee's Virginian Army halted his invasion of the North. Nowadays there's an impressive museum with exhibits and films, as well as the most impressive 'Gettysburg Cyclorama'.

This is just a section of this impressive work. It was a 360 degree panorama.

This is a painting in the round from 1884, (21 years after the battle) by Thure de Thuistrup. It was exhibited around America, and then forgotten about and left to rot. Fortunately it was rediscovered, restored and hung in a purpose made gallery, with set dressing in front of it spanning the 360 degrees. It sounds naff, but is in fact a very impressive piece of work.

Can you see the join between the foreground set dressing and the painting?

The whole scene is full of such detail...

We chose to walk to the battle site and get a feel of the terrain. Here is not the place to detail the event - there are a multitude of resources for the curious, we're simply recording our impressions of the site.

The battle is much easier to understand when on the spot. The heights of the inclines, the distance the soldiers had to cover over open ground, the positioning of the guns - all this helps to decipher what occured on those fateful days of 1863. What we both found astonishing was the frontal attack up a hill over open ground. Looking at the view today it seems suicidal, yet the Confederate soldiers almost made it, at one point capturing some Union guns on the ridge. But the attack couldn't be sustained, and the Confederates withdrew.

This is the open ground the Confederates attacked across...

...the Union soldiers were here on the ridge behind the wall, firing down with cannon and rifles.

In England, our civil war battlefields have very few monuments. In Worcester where the final decisive battle was fought between Cromwell and King Charles II there are a few noticeboards explaining the events, but that's about it. In America things are different.

Just some of the memorials.

We couldn't believe the number of monuments honouring the regiments that fought at Gettysburg. There are rows of them lining the roads - we counted over 20 on Cemetery Ridge alone including the largest, the State of Pennsylvania Monument. Apparently in total there are around 1200 at Gettysburg. Presumably no-one wanted to be left out. We prefer the Shakers quiet confidence of one memorial for everyone

As a reminder of why the American Civil War was fought, here's Lincolns post battle speech at Gettysburg:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

But the area isn't completely safe from harm. A lot of the surrounding land is private property, and on July 20, 2009, a Comfort Inn and Suites opened on Cemetery Hill adjacent to Evergreen Cemetery. 

Capitalism may yet get the better of America's history.

Shake it up...

America has long offered freedom from religious persecution - the Amish being one example. One other is the Shakers, founded in England in 1770 by Ann Lee. An offshoot of the Quakers, they were said to "shake" because they danced and spoke in tongues.

Their prayer meetings looked like a good old knees up.

Lee had lost four young children which she saw as a punishment from God. Following the death of her fourth child she claimed to have had a vision from God in which it was explained to her that sexual intercourse was the root of all sin, and that to truly serve God, one must be celibate.

Ann Lee

In 1772, Ann received another vision from God, in the form of a tree, in which it was communicated to her that "a place had been prepared" for the Shakers in America. So nine Shakers emigrated to America in 1774, and built the first of eighteen Shaker communities in America.

Their buildings have an elegant practical simplicity.

Shakers live by four basic tenets; they live communally, they were celibate, they regularly confess their sins and they separated themselves from the outside world. The communities were revolutionary because they offered both spiritual and physical equality - men and women were fundamentally equal and treated as such. This equality also extended to non-Christians and individuals of different races who joined the communities.

Each member of the community had an obligation to work, which resulted in a surplus of products that the Shakers made for sale. This meant they were a prosperous community. Their beautiful crafts, buildings and grounds have therefore always reflected both the pride and care that they took in their work, and the simplicity and utility that their lives demanded.

Typical Shaker furniture - cleverly made to hang out of the way.

 We visited what was once a Shaker community in Canterbury, New Hampshire and liked what we discovered.

The Meeting Hall. Gentlemen entered the door on the left, ladies on the right.

They had no personal possessions but they were practical - inventing metal pen nibs, the flat broom, a prototype washing machine called a wash mill, the circular saw (invented by a woman, Tabitha Babbit), waterproof and wrinkle-free cloth, a metal chimney cap that blocked rain and they improved on the plough.

No photographs allowed inside the buildings - so the wood store must suffice to show how practical they were...

As pacifists the Shakers did not believe in harming others, even at time of war. As a result, in the Civil War both Union and Confederate soldiers found their way to the Shaker communities. Shakers tended to sympathize with the Union but they did feed and care for soldiers on both sides. President Lincoln exempted Shakers from military service, and they became some of the first conscientious objectors in American history.

With one of their tenets being celibacy, to survive as a community they needed new believers to join them - or they adopted children. At the age of 21 however these were given a choice of whether to remain with the Shaker community or go their own way into the world - even receiving money and help to get themselves started if needs be. But perhaps inevitably the numbers have dwindled from over 4000 in 1850  to under a dozen today.

Here they elected to have one gravestone for all the Shakers buried in this graveyard. That's real solidarity!

We liked the Shakers. There was a simplicity and honesty about their lives that had a great attraction for us.

Women did women's work and men did men's, but they were always equal before God.

To quote from the website of the last Shaker community at Sabbathday:

"Shakerism has a message for the this present age - a message as valid today as when it was first expressed. It values human fulfillment highly and believes that we fulfill ourselves best by being nothing more nor less than ourselves. It believes that Christian love is a love beyond disillusionment, for we cannot be disillusioned with people being themselves. Surely God would not have it otherwise for it is in being ourselves - our real selves - that we are most like Christ in his sacred oneness. "

Washington With a Difference.

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end”

We were driving to a camp site West of Bethel, and as we passed through Bethel we decided to stop at a restaurant for lunch.

There we met Jeff, an Englishman married to an American, who just happened to run a campsite. Of course we ended up there - the only vehicle.

The view from our window.

We were all invited up to the house for dinner and spent a delightful evening chatting to Jeff and Patty, his wife. During the evening we learned of Mount Washington and the road trip to the top.

It even beats a Home Depot car park!

Our next day was thus sorted. After a farewell morning coffee at the house we set off for the mountains.

The top is where the towers are.

Now I give you all this detail because it's a very good example of how travel without agenda can unfold. One chance encounter can set the course for the next week.

Can you spot the road?

Mount Washington isn't a towering peak, standing at only 6288 feet above sea level, but it does have two things going for it. It stands proud of the mountains for miles around, which with the prevailing Norwesterly wind means it's a peak with exciting weather.

The furthest mountains are over 100 miles away.

It held the record for many years of the highest recorded wind speed on the planet. We were told that there were two men in the hut on the mountain that night, and they watched in horrific fascination as the walls flexed in and out by six inches. If you imagine putting a shed onto a lorry trailer and driving at over two hundred miles an hour, you'll have an idea of the forces involved. It must have been tied down pretty well…

The chains hold the hut to the mountain.

The second thing the mountain has going for it is the construction of a road and a railway right to the top. This happened over a hundred years ago, which is just as well as it would be impossible to get permission for the same enterprises nowadays.

The trains are especially built by the company that runs the railroad. It's been here over a hundred years.

The family business a while back.

The road has been privately owned by the same family for over a hundred years, which doesn't surprise me as it's a nice little earner. Even late in the season the buses were solidly booked until the end of the day.

Ice from the clouds. More people die here from the cold in Summer than in Winter - the weather's so changeable.

The vertical distance from the start is around a mile, and took half an hour with stops to look out of the windows down the various precipices. The road snaked round hairpins with no safety barriers - an active imagination is not an asset on this journey. We had half an hour's stop at the top, which was not enough to fully enjoy the views, as the day was unusually clear. Distant peaks over a hundred miles away were visible. It was exhilarating.

This is a rare sight. Most days the clouds get in the way.

On the way down the driver told us of the various races up the mountain. The oldest runner to make it from bottom to top was ninety four. The fastest cyclist arrived at the summit in just over forty nine minutes and the fastest car took six minutes eleven seconds - averaging over seventy miles an hour.

Here's a video of the event. (Round about three minutes twenty in...)

Luckily our driver was a little slower, and on the way down suggested we visit some waterfalls a few miles along our route. They were tucked away by the road, and without his recommendation we would have simply driven past.

Nearly ninety feet to fall.

And so our trip continues, each chance event leading to the next until we have to be at the airport for our flight home.

"It's good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end."

Portland - a Local Town for Local People.

Portland is another harbour on the coast of Maine. Although it has the largest population in the State it's not the capital. That distinction goes to Augusta, an hour's drive further North. It's another place that owes its existence to geography; there's a natural harbour well protected from the anger of the Atlantic by numerous outlying islands.

Portland Observatory.

 

Of course, we went to a museum here, but one with a difference. It was an observatory, in the sense of a watch tower, built on a hill to see out to sea over the islands. 

How it looked when it was new in the early days of Portland.

It was built by subscription, as the shipping trade was the life blood of the community.

Still here since 1807.

All that was interesting enough, but we felt that to understand Portland better we needed to get under its skin, so to speak. So we paid a visit to the International Cryptozoology Museum downtown. Yes, International!

We didn't know what cryptozoology was before we went in, and we're not sure what it is now we've come out.

Bigfoot feet casts.

We think it's the study of hominid species that may or may not exist, like Bigfoot in North America or the Yeti in the Himalayas.

It was a bizarre experience, looking at plaster casts that may, or may not, prove that a hitherto unknown creature was clumping around the forests of the world.

It wasn't exactly a deep scientific experience mulling over the weird exhibits.

How to keep warm in cold water.

Not too attractive to a seaman.

We couldn't imagine the rest of it.

This is a modified Ray, manipulated to resemble a weird beast.

Another singularly unattractive mermaid.

Is this a fake?

But then we realised that here was a metaphor for Downtown Portland. Walking around we'd all noticed and commented on the fact that there were more strange characters around than normal. People whistling in the street is ok, but - long repetitive blasts is not normal; a staggering guy with a red scar from his cheek to his hairline; a woman in a wheelchair, pushing the wheels with her hands but also walking with her feet; a woman in a track suit engaged in a conversation with someone as she sat in the middle of the pavement; a bearded hippy pushing an empty supermarket trolley.

This is not Photoshopped.

It was the number of such people that surprised us, and it slowly dawned on us that Stephen King the horror writer came from here. We then caught the bus out to our RV and made a quick exit from Portland.