Salon post:March 8

[jenett]

Apologies for lack of post last week: the travel beat me up.

Topic of the week
Places you've enjoyed going (near where you live, longer travel, everything in between.)

What I've been up to
Work travel, which threw my schedule off in all sorts of ways. Opening for a project at work. Many visiting researchers (3 days in two weeks, two different people which is a lot on top of the travel and the snow day we had on Monday...) Basically, playing catchup.


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Comments

[eseme]

I love Morse Mountain beach. It is a wildlife preserve, managed by one of the local colleges (it is a nesting ground for several bird species). It is a beautiful beach, and due to the small parking lot (when it is full it is full and you have to wait until someone leaves) and the lack of easy accessibility it is not crowded.

The rules are that you park and walk in. There is an access road with a few summer cottages on it, but cars are not allowed past a gate unless they are staying at a cottage. No dogs due to nesting birds. The walk is about a mile and a half, and there is a hill (the "mountain" of the beach name) in the middle.

The beach is utterly lovely, with bits of black mica in the sand that make for beach fog. It is not crowded (unlike Popham State park across a small creek) and it is lovely and quiet. I am fortunate that I can make the walk.

I am pondering others - we have a lovely local chain of toy stores call Island Treasure Toys that are a joy to visit.

[jenett]

Oh, that does sound gorgeous!

My favourite place in Maine was the astronomy spot near campus, which was open one night a month for the public (which for various reasons I never made) but was also generally known as 'place to go look at stars'. That's where I got to see the aurora borealis (twice!)

Once was like a glowing light from a city in the far distance (though if you actually look at a map, there is no town of any size between that point and the North Pole) and the second one had shifting colours and was gorgeous.

[eseme]

I would love to see the Auroras sometime!
I really do love the beach, I don't go all the time, but I try to get to a beach every summer at least once.

[cjsmith]

When I was living overseas, I was broke, desperately lonely, and not a little bit bored. I decided to see the city as a tourist would. I set out to visit every single public park in town; I took inspiration from postcard photos and got up at dawn to see those lovely views. Eventually I began taking some decent-looking photographs, too. In the end, some of my fondest memories of that time are of the parks and structures I visited "just to have something to do".

[jenett]

That sounds like a fantastic way to get to know the city!

[cjsmith]

Thank you! It really was lovely!

[jazzyjj]

I was in England and Hawaii several years ago, and enjoyed them both. As far as local travel...I've been using ADA paratransit a lot more. It is operated by the local bus company, and has gotten much better over the years. As a matter of fact I just used it a couple days ago to go to a meeting. I won't bore everyone with horror stories, but it is honestly kinda a pain in the backside to schedule rides. You basically have to go when they can take you, although I have found it tends to work best if you're not on a schedule.

[yhlee]

I know it's so cliché, but New York City! I went on an indulgent short vacation there by myself this past September, staying at a hostel to cut costs. The hostel was hilarious (nobody in my room of up to four could figure out how to get the shower head working, so washing was...clumsy) but my roommates were all interesting and polite people, and talking to them was part of the fun. I went to the Strand to buy books, and visited the Met for what was technically the second time (but I was a small child during the first visit and don't remember it). I loved the Arms & Armor display and took many phone pics, and then I got lost, which was fortuitous because I ended up amid the sculptures, and as it so happens I adore sculpture. I would be terrified to live in NYC, but when work takes me there, it's always a treat, especially if I can detour to do a bit of shopping; I was last there in February and stopped by The Forbidden Planet to buy some comics.

[jenett]

New York City is great that way. I should see about doing another trip down there sooner than later.

(And the Arms and Armor exhibit at the Met is fantastic. So is their musical instruments collection, and I will go bask in the Egyptian rooms, especially the Temple of Dendur, for hours.)

[yhlee]

I hope to see the musical instruments on some other trip, but I ran out of time, and I was told to pick a couple exhibits and focus on them rather than, impossibly, try to do the WHOLE Met in one trip. ^_^

[jenett]

That was indeed sensible advice!

[silveradept]

As it turns out, when I'm on foot and somewhere reasonably metropolitan, Pokémon Go is a decent tour guide, because it foregrounds murals, street art, interesting statues and parks and all sorts of things that might not otherwise get a second glance, except that they also provide items to catch digital Pokémon with, and that often means I go looking for whatever's been tagged as a stop. It's made me more aware of the civic art around me.

Which was, frankly, a really nice sense to have when I was in Philadelphia for a library conference, because Philadelphia has architecture to drool over and public art displays that are really awesome. (One by the conference center was all sorts of giant-size board game pieces, which was awesome.)

[eseme]

That is really great, I had no idea Pokemon Go is a built-in tour guide (I have never played).

[silveradept]

Assuming that you're somewhere that has those points enabled, it can be really great at showing you what's available publically in any city.

Even though it's officially a game about walking around and catching digital creatures.