Rain, rain, go away!

May 15, 2011  in Jackman, ME

(As an aside, I am having great problems uploading my pictures; thus, no pictures yet in this blog. I'll keep trying. Must be because of the rain!)

We’ve used up all our luck with weather! After a few more days in the Berkshires and sunshine, we have travelled to our next timeshare in Jackman (WHERE?) Maine. It started raining Saturday and has continued today, Sunday, and is expected to continue for the remainder of the week we are spending in Jackman.  But before I talk about Jackman, let me tell about our last couple of days in the Berkshires.

On the 13^th we already knew that our time in Jackman would be rain-filled so we looked for stores that would sell games for us to play to while away the time. There actually are several including one called Let’s Play A Game and another called Persnickety. LPAG wasn’t open and had no information whatsoever on its door as to when it might be open and the other mostly sold games like CandyLand. It did have a backgammon game so we were partially able to buy locally. We headed for the local Walmart that sold games like Dominoes and Scrabble. Thus fortified for the coming rain-enforced isolation, we ventured out to conquer more hills and falls.

The remaining falls in the immediate area is Waconah Falls. (An aside here: without any of my grammar and language books at hand, I am trying to figure out if one river falling over the edge is a fall or falls? The name is Waconah FallS but it IS just one river falling over one edge. I worry about things like that.) A rather small fall, it has the not so great distinction of being overrun with mosquitoes. Have I mentioned how much I HATE mosquitoes? Needless to say, I did not want to linger long among the fauna of the itch-instigating kind.

As we drive about Massachusetts I’ve noticed that the powers that be do seem to care about the well-being of the construction workers. There doesn’t seem to be a public works program that is too small to have a policeman protecting the workers. There was one job where the policeman (dressed in fluorescent orange) actually walked right with the construction worker (dressed in fluorescent orange) as he crossed the street, presumably to keep the crazy drivers from mowing him down as he did his job.

We will be leaving our “home,” the Ponds at Foxhollow, tomorrow and so have to pack the car. I know we will be gone for about two months, but the sheer volume of stuff we have brought is amazing, even to me. We seem to have lost the knack we used to have of travelling light! I was proud of the fact that Randy & I flew around the world using just a carry-on bag each. And we took our children on a trip to Hong Kong in the summer followed by Australia/New Zealand in the winter. We each had ONE carry-on bag. So how did we degenerate to expanding our luggage to fill the available space?

On Saturday, the 14^th, we were packed up and heading north in the it’s-not-raining-yet-but-we-know-it-will weather. This was our longest day since we arrived in Washington, about 390 miles from Lenox to Jackman. The rain held off until we were about 50 miles from Jackman and even then it didn’t pour down, just drizzle, drizzle, drizzle.

We are at the InnSeason Mountainview resort and it is one of the nicest we have ever stayed at. There are some hotel rooms but we are in a three-bedroom log cabin with all the amenities including a Jacuzzi tub and a gas fireplace. The kitchen is fully stocked, the tvs are a nice size, the sofas are comfortable, lots of windows (haven’t seen any moose yet, however). I think it could sleep 10 using the sofas in the loft and the living room. About the only negative I can come up with is that it doesn’t have internet access at the cabin (they do have it at the main lodge, however).

For the next few days we will watch tv, play cards or backgammon, read, write, balance the checkbook, and… I think it is a beautiful area but the clouds are so low we can’t see much at all. We’ll be in a timeshare about 75 miles away in Greenville, ME, in about two and a half weeks. I hope the weather will be better by then! 

Jackman is pretty small, population 818 in 2010, but it has the necessities: a grocery store, several bars, gas stations, etc. Randy went out this morning (Sunday, May 15, 2011) to find a Sunday newspaper and succeeded in getting the Bangor paper. He asked about other papers and the shopkeeper said they used to get USAToday but it was always a day late so they called it USAYesterday. No Sunday New York Times!

We also found a funny typo—at least I hope it’s a typo—that said we could go river rafting “in the summer month.”

Rain, rain, go away! Come again some other day!