Low Maine

Leaving the vicinity of Concord, NH, and heading along a non-interstate path, we were able to breach the southern tip of Maine around 10:30 AM. Earlier, I awoke early and just after dawn, to the rhythmic pecking of a woodpecker. If you haven't heard a woodpecker, it is like an echoing, poignant, dull throb.  "Poink, Poink, Poink, Poink, Poink, Poink, Poink!"  Seven in a row, and then surprising silence for just enough time to reconsider the defeathering, and then another few batches of Poinks and I wished the hard nosed bird was dead.

Wrap up of the campsite was a bit slow, but possessing the flattering combination of no required destination and no required timeline, how could it matter?  At 10:30 AM, sitting on a Visitor Center bench at the southernmost point of Maine, I saw visions of grandeur and made the call that we'd be camping in Acadia, watching the Peresids meteor shower, on the shores of the Atlantic, in a magical national park, as the last embers of our fire died out this night.

Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out the way you think.  We were a bit late getting to Acadia, arriving around 4 PM, and apparently the first-come, first-served camping spots are usually filled around 9 AM.  This is the first time I wanted to camp in a National Park and have been rejected...Oh, NPS You're so good, I can't be mad at you; I forgive you.

Tomorrow morning, 9AM, I'll be in line for a camping slot.  Tomorrow night, and probably the night after that I will be lying on my back, looking straight up, and if the sky is clear, and if the moon is shy, I could see meterorites.  And I'll probably do something during the day too worth writing about.

RT
(why no pictures?  Because I either can't find or worse forgot to bring my camera to computer transfer line.  I'm taking pictures, though only a handull so far.  I'll look again for the connector, but I may have to insert the photos later.)

Towards Maine

295 to NJTPK to blah, blah, blah, and at long last we get past Hartford, CT, and the road gradually begins to follow the contours of the land it inherited, and it's beginning to feel like a Road Trip.  Getting of the interstates to avoid Boston took us on a path through Vermont, and toward Concord NH.  A pretty good first day, we escaped the east coast, and travelled on some not-so-well beaten paths, to end up in or near to Henniker, New Hampshire.

The town of Henniker is famous for being the only town in the world known as Henniker.  It's a fact!  I know it is because I read it off the placemat at the "Country Diner" we had for dinner.

After seeing a promo for the "Mile Away Campground" in Henniker, NH, we drove a mile and arrived at a sanitized version of a campground.  Even our tent site had plug-in electricity and fresh water.  An opportunity to test camping skills was required.

I succeeded at tent assembly...perhaps even excelled.  Inflatable mattress skills were rated as proficient, but needing attention.  Ice and drink procurement were again exceptional.  Fire starting was pass fail.  Then pass fail pass fail pass; I think the drizzling rain was conspiring against me.  Actually, with the leaf coverage that we had, the intermittent rains were really refreshing.

Camping out again confirms how much I miss that time when I was RoadTripping for the first time.

Off to Maine

Hello.  Do you remember me?

I am embarking on another road trip.  A small one.  Really just heading up to Maine for a go see.  Perhaps it's not a road trip.  But it has the feel of it.

The goal of this little two week excursion is pleasure.  Which makes it the same as all the other things I wrote about on this blog.  Simply, I'm going yo have as much fun as I can.  Which means I am seeking out beauty, savoring foods, and enjoying whatever comes along.  I've looked back on my previous blog posts, and I can't discern anything other than that was the purpose of the trips.

I just wrote there was no other purpose, but I do have a purpose in this state.  So for this trip, I'm heading to Maine.  I will be able to tick off my 49th state that I have visited.  Only Alaska remains.

So, I guess I'm back blogging for a week or two.  However, this trip is a bit different.  I may be camping out a bit more than usual.  This increased camping is because I am travelling with another enthusiast who owns actual camping gear like pots and pans, utensiles, coffee pot, and fishing equipment.  For the first time I will have most of the stuff needed for a multi-night camping trip.  We may even be able to hike to a camping ground and stay over night there.  And we might even catch, clean and cook our own supper.

We will perhaps be off the grid a lot, I may not be able to blog often, But I'll try to get a posting out, every so often.

Cheers,

RT

Bali - Day 6 - Spare Ribs, Martini, Suckling Pig...The Food Issue

Most of the stuff I did today I have already described, so I will now catch up with a topic dear to us all...FOOD!

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Nearly all the meals we have eaten here in Bali have either been at our Villa, or in the local town of Ubud. Ubud is renowned for it's very fine cuisine, and besides the local Indonesian offerings, nearly all the great cuisines of the world can be found here not just as a token option, but in some of it's best forms. If you want French, Italian, Chinese, Mediterranian, American, California, even a Philly Cheese steak, you can find it here and it will more than please your pallate. I haven't seen a Bratwurst on the menu yet, but then again, I don't really consider German food to rank highly in the world of foodies. I personally don't care too much about deserts, and nothing sweet here has wowed anyone so much that I need to write home about it, so I will limit my discussion to the big 3 meals.

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Breakfast:

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I can't comment on breakfast in Ubud because breakfast was included as part of our stay at the Villa Agung Khalia and we never ate it anywhere else. The meal always was started with a bowl of fresh mixed fruit that varied slightly day to day. The fruit could be topped by yogurt if desired, but after the first day I chose to enjoy it plain as it need no company. The options included a few of the standard American options like 2 eggs any style with bacon, or cereal, or a cheese omelet (or w/ veggies) and were about what you'd expect. A few of the American options came with a certain flair like the French toast which had a sliver of strawberry jam in the middle of it and was topped not with syrup, but rather a smattering of honey and was quite enjoyable.

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On certain days the Balinese breakfast was available and it consisted of an upside down dish full of rice semi-circled with fried tofu and an unknown relative of tofu as well as a side plate of delicious water spinach. The spinach was available at almost all meals we had in Bali and was always delicious. To be honest, I stuck with the other breakfasts, though it it is available tomorrow, I will order it. Coffee, tea, milk and water were the only liquids, but for us adults it was all we wanted anyway. Yet it was surprising that OJ or papaya juice or some other juice was not offered because it is so prevalent at every meal we had elsewhere.

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Lunch:

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While dinners would normally be my favorite meal of the day, lunch offered an abundant variety and never fell below 9 stars out of 10. Oddly, it seemed that the cheaper a meal was the better it tasted. When we splurged and payed about $12 US per person the meal was only 9 stars, but if we dipped below the $5 mark, it was 10 stars. Yesterday's pig was a prime example.

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We went to Ibu Oka where the only thing on the menu was the suckling pig. The restaurant opens around 11AM and serves plates of either Special for $2.60 or Different for $4.oo until they run out of pig which is usually around 3PM. From what we could tell, the only difference between special and different was that different the rice on a separate plate, and special came as a glorious mess piled high. We all went cheap and ordered the pile of Special which had pork from various parts of the pig, some savory blood sausage, spinach and another spicy vegetable, a slab of the delectable skin and of course some rice. (Nearly every meal here comes with rice...hey, we're surrounded by infinite rice paddies.) The slab of skin was the star of the meal. For $3.00 you can order just a plate of the skin, and we tried to order it, but it was sold out. The skin shatters like glass under the fork and is a hedonistic pleasure I hope to enjoy again and as often as possible.

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Another example of superb lunch came today when we supped at Naughty Nuri's. Since it was a Saturday, the 9 or so table were full and we had to stand out front by the sidewalk grill where they were making slabs of BBQ ribs and chicken that wafted smoke on us during the wait for a table. When we saw a table near finishing we hovered around until we could usurp their table before they even finished eating or paying. Most all of us ordered the famous ribs and we added a couple of orders of garlic bread that came quickly and were devoured.

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The ribs took a while longer because some Frenchies at the table next to the grill distracted our server and procured our slabs of ribs. We didn't mind because this gave us a chance to order a couple of martinis. A sign near our table noted that this hole-in-the-wall eatery had won the award for the best martini in Indonesia, and a T-shirt they were proudly selling with the slogan, "Eat, Pay, Leave," had a subtext that referred to a NY Times article about the best martinis in the world of which this was one. I must say it was superb, and the shaken not stirred flair of the server added to the quality. On my second martini, the fall off the bone ribs were at last delivered and I would have to say they rank as some of the best I have ever had...BTW, the ribs cost $6.50.

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Other lunches included a Mediterranean small plate at Cafe Luna, extraordinary beef and chicken sate with peanut sauce at a place whose name I can't remember, and at another place some perfectly cooked tempura vegetable. My only regret is that I did not get to try something from one of the street cart vendors that the locals eat at.

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Dinner:

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Thrice we ate at the Villa, and the first meal everyone ordered something different and all the meals were good, but one was great. The second time we ate at the Villa, the sweet and sour whole red snapper meal was ordered by most all as it was perfectly cooked and covered in a sauce that I could have spooned into my mouth unaccompanied.

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Outside of the Villa, we ate at restaurants like the Dirty Duck and Terazzo, where we filled the table with a variety of entrees and appetizers with hardly a single dish failing to please and some that we forced everyone to try because the could not be missed.

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Our final night here in Bali, tonight, we ate for the third time here at the Villa and we splurged. For $100 US ($12.50 per person), we got ourselves a pig. A suckling pig that perhaps came from the same restaurant we had lunch at the prior day. Accompanied by vegetables, rice, sausage and more, we probably ate less than a 10th of the suckling pig, and it was as succulent as can be. We took home a bit of the leftovers, but I think we supplied many a meal to our gracious hosts for days to come.

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Tomorrow we fly back to Hong Kong and the following morning back to the snowed in east coast of the good old USA. Food here has been nothing short of superb, we've eaten like kings and queens, and if that were all that Bali had to offer it would be enough. But couple that with adventures of a lifetime, and this has been unquestionably my greatest road trip ever!

Bali - Day 5 - Paddy Walk, Ubud Market and Suckling Pig

Perhaps I am getting a bit lazier, or as buz calls it, "going native"; thus, this will be another post on the shorter side. My enthusiasm for Bali isn't waning, just my desire or need to do intensive blogging.

The day started (as it has every day here) with breakfast at the Villa. Actually we go down past the other 3 villas and have it at their dining area which consists of 3 large teak picnic tables outdoors on a covered veranda. There are a few other things we have done repeatedly and they include: massages, swimming for pleasure, playing cards, happy hour, swimming to cool off, being driven into central Ubud and sweating.

After the breakfast, massages and swimming, sis, dad, max and I went on a hike through the local rice paddies with max leading the way most of the time. It's still pretty awesome to be able to just go out in the paddies and follow the paths the farmers use to get around their plots. But the heat was a bit much and we had to return for a cool down swim.

For lunch it was into Ubud to go to a famous stall for suckling pig, the only thing on the menu. (I'm really going to need to get to the food blog before I start mish-mashing in my mind all these restaurants.) It was superb, but at $2.50 for a couple of pounds of perfectly cooked pork, I would say this might be the best Road Food I have ever had. (Tomorrow night, our final night in Ubud, we have ordered the Villa hosts to get our clan an entire suckling pig...you should all be jealous.)

Lunch was followed by shopping at the big market in Ubud where I picked up a few presents for my nieces back in the states and a Bintang beer T-shirt for myself ($2). Since arriving in Bali, Bintang is the only beer we've had, and it is cheap enough and tasty enough that we won't need to try another.

Then it was back to the Villa for more swimming and whiling away the rest of the day. BTW, for the first night here it was mostly cloud free, and the stars were brilliant. I'll be sleeping out on the porch for the 4th straight night.