“This is different from what we’re used to,” I told Paddy, who was sitting next to me.” In Seattle, we get out of our cars for a concert!” He just laughed good-naturedly.

We’d arrived in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, with 12 hours to kill before the scheduled departure of our ferry for Newfoundland. So we strolled — slowly — up and down the main street, taking in the aging, mismatched store fronts. We bought ice cream cones, licking them carefully to make them last as long as possible. We drove, leisurely, to a farmer’s market to buy fruit, selecting a handful of apples from the piles of potatoes, turnips, and cabbages. At a yard sale, I spent a loonie (a Canadian dollar coin) on a couple of hair scrunchies in UW colors. The woman who sold them to me was returning to North Sydney after ten years in Spokane, Washington. She didn’t say why.

Our slow, deliberate pace made everything seem a bit surreal. And then we ended up in this park, where things were surreal for a different reason.

It was a concert, the band playing in a small, temporary bandshell, well-amplified. Not Cape Breton’s Irish music, but “cryin’ in your beer” country music with a twang. Though the instrumentals were fine, many of the vocals were off key, like karaoke.

The band seemed a bit lonely, because the audience wasn’t very close. About 50 feet from the bandshell, a handful of people sat on benches. Further out was the real audience: Dozens of cars, with about a hundred people in them, were parked in the gravel lot that surrounded the picnic area. I wanted to ask someone why they were sitting in their cars, but they had their windows rolled up!

My curiosity about this strange breed of entertainment led me to Paddy, a cheerful older fellow sitting by himself on a bench. We struck up a conversation, chatting during the songs. I noticed Paddy occasionally looking over his shoulder, and he explained, “I’m waiting for my girlfriend.” There was a twinkle in his eye, and I found myself looking around for some matronly older lady who might be heading our way.

But Mary was both younger and more vivacious than I expected. She arrived with her father, 84-year-old Clarence, and we all moved over to make room on the bench. Despite the music, it was a delightful evening, and the five of us chatted and laughed and watched the people. Between songs, the cacaphony of appreciative honking from the cars was deafening, drowning out both our conversation and our polite applause.

There was a great deal of teasing going on, and I teased Paddy about his young girlfriend. Mary protested, “I’m a senior citizen!” She told us she’d had her first child at 15, and then went on to have 7 by the time she was 22. She was the youngest great-grandmother I’d ever seen.

It was apparent that she enjoys spending time with her father, the only great-great-grandfather I’d ever met. Clarence is short but spry, describing himself as a “jack of all trades, master of none.” He has lived his whole life in North Sydney, but he’s never taken the ferry to Newfoundland. Clarence showed us the watch he wears that his now-deceased wife of 53 years gave him; when it stopped working, he had the face replaced with her portrait. You can tell that he misses her.

Mary and Clarence had come late to the concert because they were at St. Mary’s Catholic cemetary, attending a mass for the dead. They told us that the red candles placed on the graves would burn all night, and that it was a sight to see. They each had a spouse buried in that cemetary, along with Clarence’s father. One of Mary’s daughters was murdered 13 years ago in the neighboring community of Sydney Mines. She’s in the cemetary, too.

Sipping hot tea, we huddled closer on the bench as it got dark and started getting cold. But we all stayed until the end to hear the band play Clarence’s request of “Fallen Leaves.” Then we exchanged hugs with our new friends and went on our way, buoyed up by the encounter.

With a few more hours to kill, we drove to the cemetary, where tiny red candles flickered every few feet across the hillside. We parked the van and strolled among the tombstones, our way lit only by the stars and those tiny red candles. A loon called from the darkness, making the hair on my neck stand up. Nobody else was walking through the cemetary. In true North Sydney fashion, they came to see the candles, but they all stayed in their cars.

In the middle of nowhere, at a Newfoundland Tourist Chalet, we were engaged in conversation by the middle-aged attendant, whose nametag identified her as Rita. She was curious, friendly, and so garrulous that I suspected we were the only people who’d stopped in since she’d opened the place that Sunday morning. She asked the three questions that almost every Newfoundlander asks us: “Where are you from? Is this your first visit to Newfoundland? Are you here on holiday?”

Eventually, the conversation came around to Rita’s children. Her son has graduated from university, but had to move to Halifax for a job. Then she spoke about her daughter, who is in her sixth year of university at St. John’s. The girl hopes to become a teacher in Gander, but such jobs are very hard to come by, and the competition is fierce. “You have to have French,” Rita said, “and music. That’s why it’s taking so long for her to finish.”

That is the story of Newfoundland’s younger generation. The fishing industry collapsed in 1992, and there’s not much else to do here. To get a job, you have to leave. Or, in the case of Rita’s daughter, study for years to land a teaching job in a community with fewer than 10,000 people.

At a restaurant down the road in Grand Falls-Windsor, the waitress asked the usual three questions, surprised that we had no family or other connections to bring us all the way to Newfoundland. When she heard my dad was from Florida, she said her son was at school in Prince Edward Island, studying to be a chef. “When he gets done with school, he wants to work either in Florida or on a cruise ship. We don’t have chefs in Newfoundland. Just cooks.”

Another example of an 18-year-old Newfoundlander who has left the island and probably won’t be returning. His mother has never traveled farther than Ontario; she has no desire to.

Our next stop was the logging exhibit outside Grand Falls, where we hit a treasure trove of information. The guide there was a talkative fellow about my age who answered dozens of questions that Barry and I had saved up. “I talk a lot,” he said. “My friends tell me I have a longer tongue than a fur-lined gaiter,” referring to boots used by lumbermen.

Like many Newfoundlanders, the man was shorter than me, the product of generations of malnutrition. His ancestors had plenty of fish and turnips, but not much else. He’s a third-generation resident of Grand Falls, his family originally from a fishing community on Trinity Bay.

Grand Falls-Windsor is not a dying town; there are jobs there. In the beginning of the 20th century, an English publisher built the largest pulp mill in the world on the falls of the Exploit River, and it’s still in operation.

Talented and articulate, the guide admitted that he could get a better job outside Newfoundland but doesn’t want to. He and his wife have a 7-year-old daughter, and he loves the fact that there is so much open space here. “There are only 500,000 people in Newfoundland, and half of them are over there on the Avalon peninsula,” he told us. He raved about the free land in Newfoundland, “Crown land” where you can hunt, fish, hike, cut wood, or camp. By comparison, he described a hunting trip with relatives in Ontario, where they had to drive “for hours” to find a tiny patch of Crown land. He made me think of a cowboy from the West, unable to fathom life in a city with all the people.

But I wonder about his daughter. What will Newfoundland be like when she grows up? Will she stay or leave?

At our hotel that evening, the clerk was a woman from Ontario who moved to Newfoundland 13 years ago. I expressed my surprise, saying, “That’s different. Mostly we hear of people leaving Newfoundland.” She’d come to tiny Robert’s Arm at age 18 with her parents, who were originally from Newfoundland and who bought a little hotel for their retirement. She met her husband in Robert’s Arm, married and had children. Just a normal family, but a rare one to buck the trend. Adding Newfoundlanders, not taking them away.

A couple of weeks ago, Barry and I were sorting our socks in the “Soap Bubble,” Lunenburg’s only laundromat. On the folding counter, we’d set aside the notebook where we were compiling a grocery list.

Mundane stuff, not usually of interest to travelogue readers like yourself.

A tall, lanky guy with a neatly trimmed beard came into the laundry. He was stuffing his clean clothes into a compact orange duffel bag when he glanced our way. “Cruising Notes,” he read out loud from the cover of the notebook. “Are you cruisers?”

I looked down at the medium-sized notebook, one of a half-dozen I’d accidentally-on-purpose removed from the supply room at Microsoft. At the time, Barry had complained, “I can’t tell them apart!” so I decorated each one differently with markers, stickers, and ribbons. This one, as you know, said “Cruising Notes” in inch-high letters, with pictures of waves and junk-rigged sailboats and globes. We were currently using it for lists, notes, limericks, doodles — everything but the cruising notes for which it was originally intended.

Now folks who cruise on sailboats usually have no trouble recognizing each other. They end up in the same anchorages, marinas, or waterfront pubs, and they know each other as much by the names of their boats as by their given names. So those of us who are boatless or away from our boats have a harder time finding someone who “speaks boat,” so to speak.

In a very short time, we discovered that Kris is a world cruiser, working on a circumnavigation of North and South America. He carries a South African passport, but his accent is that wonderful mix of sounds that indicates he’s lived in many, many places. He calls himself a “professional foreigner.” He’s currently doing some work on a tall ship named Larinda. “Come on down and see her,” he said. “Most people call her a junk rig, but you’ll recognize it as a fully-battened lug rig.”

That evening, Barry and I wandered down to the boatyard for a look. The Larinda was a project boat more daunting than any we’ve ever seen, and that includes Jim Fine’s Gulfstar in New Orleans. The engine removed, furnishings ripped out, and bare sections of hull recently patched and slowly being cured. Kris is justifiably proud of his ingenious washing machine sprinkler system and timer setup to keep the ferrocement damp.

I was confused by what I saw. The boat looked ancient, like an old hulk that had been abandoned for years. But her tale is more tragic than most: She was only launched six years ago, after someone lovingly spent 28 years building her.

The impact of 2003′s Hurricane Isabel on the U.S. was so devastating that most Americans were unaware of Hurricane Juan, which made unprecedented landfall at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Larinda was one of the victims. Holed by another boat in 100-mph winds, she sank in the harbor there. Like many Canadian cities (Victoria, B.C. is one), Halifax doesn’t treat their sewage, and Larinda sank right in a sewer outfall. She sat there for three weeks before being salvaged. Pee-yoo!

Fortunately, her new owner knows a thing or two about sewage, being in the business of treating cruise ship waste. That boat has been scrubbed with every cleaner known — she may look a mess, but she’s not even stinky now.

Our tour ended, appropriately, in the forward head, where you could see signs of the boat’s former grandeur. Over the bathtub, with its whimsical frog fixtures, the walls are covered with full-color hand-painted tile showing Larinda sailing in her former glory, all her butterfly-like sails set. She was a beauty, and one day she will be again.

Back in the galley, or what remains of it, Kris broke out a bottle of Cuban rum he’s been saving since his trip to Cuba last year. We pulled up a folding chair and launched into an evening of what Brian always called, “Sea Stories and Fairy Tales.” If you don’t know the difference, show up with a bottle of rum sometime and we’ll tell you. But don’t be surprised if it takes until 2 o’clock in the morning, as it did on the Larinda, with our new friend Kris.

Up at the very northeast corner of Maine is a small old town called Lubeck. The only pay phone is in front of the convenience store, which was a hopping place at 8:05 pm (the grocery store closed at 8:00 pm). While Barry was on the phone with his Mom, I watched a car pull up with an older couple inside. They got out, and the fellow lit up like a light bulb when he found something on the ground beside his car. “Guess people just don’t like these ol’ pennies any more,” I heard him say to the woman as they went into the store.

On their way out, I chatted with the man briefly and he explained his reaction to the pennies. “Years ago, I promised God that any money I found would be His.” I smiled at him, and encouraged, he continued. “Once time, I was down on my luck, found $20. It was real tempting to keep that for myself! But when you make a promise to the Lord like that, you better keep it!” He winked at me, wished me safe travels, and drove into the night.

We spent the night at the Lubeck boat ramp. Learned a lesson or two about boat ramp parking lots. First of all, they’re great places to make out in your car. Which means there was plenty of noise and activity there at night, even though the boat ramp was not in use. Also, if there are commercial fisherman, don’t expect to sleep in. They all showed up for work about 5 am.

So at 6 am, we were at the tiny border crossing between Lubeck and the Canadian island of Campobello. We planned to visit Franklin Roosevelt’s summer home there, the little 37-room “cottage” where he contracted polio. The border guard asked our intentions, and we answered truthfully that we were only planning to be there for the day. Later that day, we found out we could take two ferries and be on the New Brunswick mainland without any additional border hassles. After all our worries about crossing the Canadian border and being searched for contraband guns, meat, or fruit, it was completely anticlimactic. We were in, and we were going to stay — not one day, but several months.

Passing through Bangor, Maine, we were surprised and delighted to find our visit coincided with the (free!) National Folk Festival. We weren’t familiar with the festival, but evidently it moves to a new location every three years. Bangor’s a small city, or maybe just a big town, with some real economic problems. The festival didn’t seem any bigger than Seattle’s annual Folklife, but it was a big deal for little Bangor, bringing in much-needed tourist dollars and sparking revitalization of their waterfront.

At first glance, I didn’t see familiar names in the program. Then we sat down in the shade (92 Fahrenheit, so it was the only hot day in Bangor all year), listened to a Grammy-winning Dobro player, and read the program in depth. Henry Butler! I’d heard Henry play the piano live, on the radio in New Orleans, and I knew we were in for a treat. Then I saw that Solas was a band formed by Seamus Eagan — I knew him from his solo album. He was a child prodigy who won the all-Ireland prize in just about every Celtic instrument. A Tejano band called Los Fantasmas del Valle* consisted of three guys in their 60′s who’d been playing together for 40 years, and their new accordionist, at 20, younger than the band itself.

It was a memorable musical day. The Tejano band had us up on the floor dancing, and I could see why they recruited that young pipsqueak for the squeezebox. He was great, and he carried the melodies flawlessly. We were way at the back of the tent for Solas, but I could see which one was Seamus Eagan — he was the fellow who played three different instruments just during the first song. And Henry Butler was just fantastic. He’s totally blind, so he looks a little awkward when he’s sitting on stage and not playing. But once he starts tickling those ivories, it’s like magic. If I wasn’t sitting on the ground, I would have been on the edge of my seat. We gave him a standing ovation, which he couldn’t see, but a number of us (including yours truly) were shouting, “We love you, Henry!” which got his attention.

After the show, we stood in line to get Henry’s autograph. He wrote his full name out, very slowly, with a black marker on the disc itself. I told him of my brother, who’s also blind and named Henry. But he cheats and just writes “Hank” — four letters, all upper case, easy! Henry laughed. I got the feeling he likes taking his time writing his autograph, because he gets to flirt with the ladies. Lucky for me!

*Author’s note: When we get good Internet access, we get a little too excited. I wrote the above entry and published it without checking it over — I accidently sent it out to a bunch of readers without replacing “???” with “Los Fantasmas del Valle!”

**Another author’s note: One reason I love Henry Butler so much is that the following quote is attributed to him: “I decided, after listening to much of the jazz music that was coming out on all the labels, that something wasn’t right. I believe that jazz, generally speaking, is going into a tank … I think I have a chance in my life right now to push the envelope in the blues arena. I was starting not to have as much fun [in jazz}, not because I could not play, but because I was feeling the whole thing was more limiting. I just wanted to have fun and gig.” Right on, Henry. I am sooooooo with you about jazz vs. blues!

When we were driving through New Brunswick in the Squid Wagon, we saw these ladders several times, and we don’t know exactly what they are for. You can’t see it clearly in this picture, but there are some ropes which would allow the height or angle of them to be adjusted somewhat.

This picture was taken on Deer Island, in the Bay of Fundy in a little cove. I think that there is still some commercial fishing going on there, so these might be for fishing. They definitely are in the part of the Bay that has pretty big tides, probably 25 or 30 feet.

If you know what these are, leave a comment…heck, even if you have a decent guess, leave a comment!

I’m sitting in a city park in Bangor, Maine. We’ve become fans of such parks, places where we can stay for hours and write, picnic, use the bathroom, and meet interesting people. Some things are still free.

A garrulous fellow stopped by to chat while we were cooking breakfast. He would have been an interesting companion for our meal, except that his choice of topics was a little too gross for the breakfast table. He got onto the subject of his adult bout with chicken pox and all the complications of it. When he started describing a rectal exam, I wished we’d picked a different park.

Back in upstate New York, we’d stopped for the night in a place called Sharon Springs. It had a number of old hotels, huge multi-story edifices with historical plaques — this one was built in 1910, this one in 1920. Things were always burning down; one block had a plaque saying that it had held the biggest hotel of all, but it had burned down and the block had sat almost vacant for almost a hundred years. It had the feeling of a resort town that had gone under before the Great Depression, and was only starting to come back.

Looking for a quiet place to park for the night, we chose the vacant block, across the street from the Hotel columbia, a small, old hotel. Sitting in the van, invisible behind our tinted windows, we noticed that the folks going into and out of the hotel were all dressed in black. The men had long beards and hats — presumably Orthodox Jew — and drove mini-vans with New Jersey license plates.

In a city park in Canajoharie, a few miles down the road, an older lady with a portable oxygen tank stopped to talk. I asked her about Sharon Springs and the Jewish connection. “Oh yes,” she said, “in the old days — this was before your time — all the Jewish folks used to come up here from the City, on the train.” I thought her topic was wandering as she started telling me about the park in Canajoharie, how it used to be different before it was fixed up, it used to flood a lot, but there was always a lot of fishing there. But she was just setting the stage.

“The Jewish ladies used to sit up here, where the parking lot is, in their long black dresses. When someone would pull in an ugly old carp — you know what a carp is, don’t you? Nasty old bottom feeders — anyway, when someone landed a big old carp, the Jewish ladies would start to clap their hands. Then they’d rush down to the bottom of the hill and try to outbid each other to buy that ugly old fish. They had to take it back to the rabbi, while it was still alive, you know, to be kosher and everything.

“I asked one of those ladies, once, how they cooked the carp. She told me they gutted it, then boiled it until the bones fell to the bottom. Then they fished out the bones and added potatoes and carrots, and made a kind of fish stew.” She made a face at the thought of the stew.

“The Amish used to fish here, too; sometimes you’d see a half a dozen buggies parked here. They never had fishing licenses, and a friend of mine decided to have a little joke once. He drove a volunteer ambulance with a loudspeaker. coming across the bridge, he saw a bunch of Amish folks fishing. Over his speaker, he announced, ‘THIS IS THE GAME WARDEN. I’LL BE COMING DOWN THERE IN FIVE MINUTES TO CHECK LICENSES.’ Well, those Amish folks just went nuts. They grabbed their stuff and ran for the hills. They thought he was for real.” Chuckling at the memory, she went on her way, leaving us to our breakfast picnic.

Yesterday, we spent hours in the city park in Rangely, Maine. It was a beautiful place, just down the road from Mooselookmeguntic. Our Kerry bumper sticker initiated a conversation with a fellow there about books, politics (he saw our Kerry bumper sticker), places. He’s a cross-country ski racer who’s been in Rangely for 45 years, admitting that he came, “before everyone else was here.” When he recommended that we visit a certain part of the Maine coast, we decided to head there next. Given where he lives, he’s a well-qualified judge of beautiful places.

It has been a most amazing 24 hours. Only yesterday, at 6:30 am, we were sitting in the parking lot of a cafe in Oquossoc, Maine (after having seen our first moose), wondering where to begin. We were looking for a needle in a haystack.

This story goes back to my first job out of college, when I worked the night shift. My friends in those days were people who slept in the morning, worked in the evening, and stayed awake all night. We knew where to find the all-night restaurants, all-night grocery stores — even places where you could buy clothes or craft supplies or greeting cards in the middle of the night. I once bought a pair of roller skates, complete with purple wheels, at 3 am.

Over the years, I lost track of my nighttime friends, Pat, Kevin, David. But David, in particular, stayed lodged in my memory, because with him, I’d had the most marvelous adventures, hatching crazy schemes, walking on railroad bridges, taking my then-new car on midnight drives. I wondered what had become of him and what he was doing with his creativity and brilliance.

I tried “googling” him, but no luck. Someone with a fairly common name, who could work in any field he chose, whose last known address was New York City, is simply ungooglable.

I had one tiny clue: A lake in remote Maine, where his parents had a vacation cabin, 20 years ago.

Barry and I have never been to Maine until now. We discussed where to go, what to see. “Mooselookmeguntic Lake,” I said, explaining the connection. He was immediately curious, having never met David. “We can go,” he said, “but only on one condition: We have to try to find their cabin.” We both thought spending a few days at this lake in Maine, asking after someone, was a good excuse to meet some local people, even if our search was totally in vain.

So at 6:30 am, we started at the grocery store, the only place in town that was open. The clerk was friendly, but didn’t know of the Watsons. After a few minutes, a fellow came in, wearing plaid. The clerk asked him. “Aye-yup,” he answered. “Over behind the Dunns’ garages, and they’re here” he said.

It couldn’t be this easy. Since it was still only 6:40, we waited a few hours. Around 9 o’clock, we drove up the narrow dirt track and banged on the door. No answer, but a car was parked nearby. Maybe an extra car, and they were already out for the day? Back in the van, we got ourselves stuck in the driveway. Lots of tire-spinning and swearing, engine revving and noise before we made it out.

At the head of the road, we asked around. The fellow in the store knew my friend, said he’d just been there a few weeks ago. He said there was somebody up there now, probably a relative. “Summer folks sleep in,” he said, to explain why they didn’t answer the door. “That can’t be,” I said to myself, thinking of the racket we’d made in their driveway.

So we headed up the road, looked up the permanent address on the tax records. If there was nobody at the cabin, at least I could write to them in New Jersey. A while later, we decided to try again.

This time, we parked in a safe spot, and I got out and looked around me more carefully. Through the trees, only its roofline visible, was another cabin. But there seemed to be no way to the front door. We picked our way through the woods, over a path-that-was-not-a-path.

Nestled so well into the trees as to be almost invisible was a pair of small cabins, joined by a sweeping deck over the lake. Earlier that morning, we’d been Knocking at the wrong cabin.

A woman came to the door, her face curious but open. I was nervous, unsure how to explain myself. I uttered about ten words before David’s sister Suzanne threw her head back and just started laughing and laughing. Somehow, I’d made it into family legend as “Margaret from Ohio,” and after almost 20 years, she and her mother, neither of whom I’d met, knew exactly who I was. They invited us in for coffee, and for the longest time, Suzanne and Patricia and I just kept looking at each other and laughing out loud, as if fate had always meant for us to meet in this remote place, in these unlikely circumstances.

We talked for hours, getting to know each other. David was the connection, but not the only topic of conversation. Patricia, who’s battling cancer in her 80′s, has been a police reporter, socialist activist, and ad agency executive. Her life has taken her from Saskatchewan to Ohio to New York, which is the place she likes best. She lost her husband, whom they called “Big” David, just seven years ago. They’d had this cabin for 30 years; it was built over a hundred years ago. In the Maine style, they call it a “camp.” Only recently, they found out from a historian that the camp was originally known as “The Crow’s Nest.” Suzanne is ambivalent about having a name for the place, thinks it pretentious, but can’t argue with a name that actually goes back a hundred years.

Suzanne lives in New York, too, and recently has been taking care of her mother full-time. She’s lively and energetic, full of stories about New York, friends, books, movies, music, and things they’ve done at the cabin. Eventually, she called David and we talked on the phone for the first time in almost 20 years. It was not the easiest conversation; where do you start, and what do you talk about after all that time? Meanwhile, Barry and the other two were having a grand time getting to know each other as new friends. On her leash, Prussia came down the path to the house, then spent a few hours sticking her nose in all sorts of corners and making herself at home.

Barry and I took a swim from their private beach, admired their sailboat and canoe, enjoyed dinner and Bananas Foster, always talking, talking, sharing stories and experiences. That night, the moon’s reflection glittered over the black surface of the lake. We slept in the van in their woods, awakening to a misty fog and chattering chipmunks.

All day, I was sort of numb with shock. I couldn’t believe the Watsons still owned the cabin. I couldn’t believe that we’d found it, an invisible place on a vast lake. I couldn’t believe we’d connected with Patricia and Suzanne on the one day before they returned home. Mostly, I couldn’t believe they knew of me, and remembered who I was.

When the morning started, all I had were some memories of an old friend and one 5-syllable name, Mooselookmeguntic. Now, I’d not only found my lost friend (who may or may not prefer to stay lost!), but I’d added 24 hours of irreplaceable memories with his surprising and wonderful family.

Inertia has this way of grabbing me and Barry. When we travel, we just keep going. When we stop, it’s hard to get going again.

We were sitting in a Wal-Mart parking lot in New Hampshire, discussing our options. To get out of inertia’s grasp, we’d just driven out of Moose River without making further plans. Were there things to see in New Hampshire? If so, what, besides the cheapest liquor stores in the U.S.?

Barry surprised me.

“You know that ‘Old Man in the Mountain’ that’s on the New Hampshire quarter and all their road signs? If we passed within ten miles of it, I’d like to stop.”

I looked at my guidebook (copyright 2003) and my road map (one index finger = 10 miles), and right there at Wal-Mart, we were less than 10 miles from it.

We drove to a special “viewing area” at Franconia Notch State Park. There was a massive, multi-level parking lot with hundreds of parking spaces. I thought to myself, “Must be off season; there are only about six cars here.”

Skipping the museum and gift shop, we headed down the quarter-mile path. At the end, a sign dramatically pronounced, “Here above your heads…” We looked up. Above our heads was a green mountain, no old man. I turned around, looked all about me, craning my neck. Then the other, newer sign registered on my consciousness.

In May 2003, the old man’s face fell. New Hampshire lost its proudest landmark. This, despite almost a century of work to shore it up with cables, cement, and fiberglass. Time — and acid rain — weakened the chin, and it tumbled off, taking lips, nose, and forehead along with it.

And now, New Hampshire is a state with lots of parking, restrooms, a gift shop, and a nice trail. But no face. The face now resides on mugs, quarters, t-shirts, road signs — and postcards. Strangely, none of the postcards show the place as it is now, despite having a year to get new ones printed.

Nobody, except me, wants a postcard of the Old Man Whose Face Fell Off the Mountain.

Soon after we arrived in Vermont by ferry, we visited the Vermont Teddy Bear factory, but that is a story for Frankie, and I won’t tell it for him.

But after a day in Burlington and a night in a small town nearby, we found ourselves driving all the way across the state (OK, so that’s only 75 miles) to the Moose River Campground. They were the only campground in Vermont that advertised wireless internet.

Of course technology doesn’t always work as it should, and it wasn’t working when we showed up. We spent the morning at the most amazing library we’d ever seen (the St. Johnsbury Athanaeum), and when we returned, laptop in hand, the Wi-Fi was working again.

We decided to stay for a week. For the first time since early June, we didn’t do much, which was a very nice change. We hadn’t really had downtime since before we bought the Squid Wagon and started travelling–we had mostly been visiting great people or hurrying off to the next great people to visit.

So we enjoyed being able to check email and surf the web again … and we added fun stuff for the website, including photos (yes, we will get a bit more in that section sooner or later) and recipes. Plus finishing our migration out of www.brigup.com and catching up on my favorite internet comic strip, Sluggy Freelance.

Since the campground had lots of seasonal folks, their pace was relaxed, and we had time to get to know some of them. There was a Hawiian Luau, with a roast pig and pina coladas, Karaoke and limbo. There was laundry, of course, and reading and van projects (now we have screens for our windows!). We met motorcycle campers from Minnesota, a bicycle camper from New York City, Newfies who gave us tips on our upcoming trip to the Maritimes, and a number of “fulltimers” in RVs.

Mac and Linda, from Kansas City, have been traveling around for three years, and they’ve seen the whole country. From Alaska to Baja, they’ve seen it all, though, as Linda admits, “My husband used to be a truck driver. So we’ve driven through it all, but we don’t always stop and see things.” They’re planning another winter in Yuma, Arizona, before returning and buying a house where she can do her stained glass art.

The couple who own Moose River, Mary and Gary, are “people people.” Their whimsical presence was felt across the whole property, from moose signs to moose sculptures to moose silhouettes, a moose flag, moose license plate, moose bumper stickers, even moose wallpaper in the bathroom. When she wasn’t mowing or registering campers, Mary spent a lot of time on the big porch between their tiny house and the office. Folks would drift over from their RVs, sit in one of the Adirondack chairs, and enjoy a “bull session” with her, full of laughter.

We didn’t want to leave Moose River or St. Johnsbury, but we finally had to move on. We headed east, having added a bumper sticker, a yellow one that says, “Got Moose?” And just the next morning, on a lonely Maine road, the answer was yes. A cow and calf stopped in the road, then walked to the side and disappeared into the brush. Finally, after trying so hard to see them in Yellowstone and Grand Teton, we could honestly say, “Got Moose!”