TURNPIKE
All of us together must have hundreds of books on travel, a great many aimed at New England where you have lived, vacationed or motored through. Today the itinerary is thick with famous possibilities. Pardon my eccentricities, though, which guide me to some weird places, like the Gillette Castle on the Connecticut River, for instance, or "Green Animals" Topiary Garden, or how about that nice cup of tea at the Dartmouth College cafeteria? And, still looking for the giant ball of string.

Manhattan Island is eleven miles long and so I had that much time to stare (carefully) and remember as New Jersey traffic whipped out of the turnpike on the long parallel drive toward the George Washington Bridge.The skyline, unmatched anywhere in the world, was now missing its double parenthesis )) on the Battery end which made it a chilling sight. Later, my California girlfriends and I would drive right by the chasm resulting from the disaster, astounded, like everyone else, at its scope. Read William Langewiesche's work called"American Ground" on the clearing of the World Trade Center remains. Meanwhile, I am trying hard to get to Tarrytown but got squeezed into the left lane on the GW Bridge and into the nightmare of the Cross-Bronx Expressway, a roadway so scary that only condemned cars and trucks with huge dents are allowed to drive it. (Like the devil's herd in "Ghost-Riders in the Sky" by Frankie Laine--and don't tell me you're too young to remember it.)

 

CHARMING CONNECTICUT
According to the publicity, the "cutest town in Connecticut," was namely Guilford, CT, home of the Faulkner's Island Light from 1802 and a central greenspace still haunted by its old Puritan cemetery--moved, for esthetic reasons, in 1817. But they left the whipping post and meeting house behind as warnings to the wise because Connecticut's first prison, Old New-Gate Prison and Copper Mine (1773 -1827) was in nearby Granby. Well, Connecticut is mighty cute all over, and must have some real charmers deeper into the interior as well as oceanside. I spent a lot of time in this state, it was packed with things to do and see: the prettiest towns, dozens of museums, lots of history and lovely beaches, too. State Parks were useless to me for overnight due to the ban on camper-dogs, which was a bummer, but that policy seems to be widespread in the east, so we stayed in private campgrounds throughout...some turned out to be v. nice, but you have to ask for remote areas using your noisy dog as an excuse. The highlights were not-to-be-believed Essex, CT with its Connecticut River Museum and Griswold Inn, and Old Lyme and the Florence Griswold Museum with its fertile collection of American art by "The Ten." Also a visit to John Alden Weir's studio in Wilton, following the"American Impressionists Trail" offered art lovers in this state. Truman and I both enjoyed that especially, me taking dozens of pictures, sketching and dreaming, he giving the old leg wave to most of the landmarks used as subjects in dozens of Weir, Thayer and Hassam paintings.

 

BUSTED
Beyond the pretty Goodspeed Opera House a few miles is a castle built by William Gillette, a semi-reclusive Shakespearean actor who made millions portraying Sherlock Holmes on the stage. Now a state park, the castle is reminiscent of a haunted ruin lurking over a Scottish moor and is worthy of a side trip for its secret rooms, strategically placed mirrors and truly odd design (by the actor himself). Mystic's charm eluded me but Stonington and its lighthouse were just wonderful. While I was inside the tiny museum having a nice chat with the curator, Truman kept busy digging up the lawn. He and I were busted by a serious old coot on a bicycle with a tut-tut manner and Congregational stare so we energetically replaced all divots in a properly penitent manner. (Visions of that whipping post danced in my head.)

 

A VERY SPECIAL MUSEUM
The biggest surprise and most exciting place to see in Connecticut was the cutting-edge Mashantucket Pequot Museum where I spent four absorbing hours with the exhibit designs, interactive stations, stories, terrific films by Hellman and Carr, artifacts, an entire ancient village plus modern-day representation. It is located on the reservation in North Stonington and nestles alongside Foxwoods, their huge 1500 room casino that brings gamblers in by the hourly busload from all over the east coast and Canada. Appoval and support for this whole compex was wrested from the Federal Government after heroic measures (DNA searches) were taken to locate remnants of a long-vanished (1637 War) tribe so they could qualify for loans, and is a tribute to spirit, perseverance, savvy and the good kind of pride. Put that one at the top.

 

GILBERT STUART AND NEWPORT
Naturally, the approach to Newport is damp, with many bridges, like skipping stones, spanning watery fringes of land. If anticipation makes arrival all the more delightful then you have an hour of shivers ahead. But, just before starting that trek I stopped at Gilbert Stuart's birthplace in Saunderstown, Rhode Island where I spent a sweet hour roaming the rough board house and millpond where he was born 12/3/1755 and lived seven years before his family left for Newport, now as then, a city treasured by the wealthy. Bumbling down the usual thin streets, the RV made it through all right to fabled Bellevue Avenue where I followed a guide through dusty, faded glamour at The Breakers. Alva Vanderbilt rampaged for women's suffrage after Cornelius died...he only lived to see four seasons at the house...and she did it down the street at the Marble House. Like the Vanderbilt mansion in Asheville, NC, The Breakers was really always just too, too much, even for her. The "glory-hallelujah" style of the Gilded Age and the competition between pretentious zillionaires for the most, the best, the biggest and the rarest fueled the design and construction. Cliff Walk along the ocean is much the same as always, with big surf busy crashing on rocks in the most picturesque way. That night I stayed at the one and only campground nearby, jammed together for 40 dollars a night without water, restrooms or telephone and wondered what Alva would have thought of that.

 

BOXWOOD BEARS
Before leaving Rhode Island, I made an impulsive stop at the "Green Animals" Topiary Gardens where huge boxwoods were formed into elephants, teddy bears and kangaroos. It was there in a side garden I found the mother of all truck gardens. At home on the farm where vegetable production abilities are highly prized, I can never squeeze much of anything out of a pepper or tomato plant...something about pruning and fertilizer I think. But that garden reminded me of the California State Fair, a cornucopia of giant, deeply colored edibles looking around for their blue ribbons. Seeing all that, plus a funny conversation with the volunteer gardener made that particular stop one of the highlights of the trip.

 

STUCK
I'm ready for some humor by this time and it came while searching the waterfront for the New Bedford Whaling Museum. My lane-and-a-half wide RV actually got stuck going down one of those skinny cobblestoned streets where, with the help of two policemen, a Coke truck driver and a shopkeeper, we were rescued and escorted to a parking place amid many bad jokes and much hilarity. The museum itself rather darkly displayed the ways, means and implementation of the near-extinction of the Right Whale here on earth in order to line the pockets of a few proud shipowners. But, that's history for you...hardly ever anything to brag about. At the small Hyannisport Museum on Cape Cod I looked at the family pictures and pondered the fate of the Kennedys; crime-based wealth, raging ambition, a soar into world fame and stylistic approval, paralyzing pain, misbehavior, unrelenting death and terrible loss haunting the family still.

 

PLYMOUTH AND THE ROCK
We moved up the Massachusetts coast to Plymouth, the Plymouth Rock, Mayflower II and Plimoth Plantation all in a row. There's not much to see in looking at the famous rock--it was pitifully reduced to a little boulder from centuries of looting by souvenir hunters before it was finally protected in an underground display surrounded by Greek columns, of all things. Mayflower II is really tiny...102 passengers, 40 crew, daily agony...how did they do it anyway? And Plimoth Plantation was spectacular! Their reenactors were first-rate, wonderful within their roles, authentic with their accents, knowledge, attitudes, political references, time-lines, religious convictions, cultural habits, medicines and relationships. Made a friend of Alice Bradford, third wife of Governor Wm. Bradford and met Priscilla Mullins and her first child, Elizabeth--my own ancestor on Mom's side through the Reed family.

 

TWILIGHT ZONE
Tried and tried to visit the John Adams museum in Quincy, but failed. Nowhere to park. And here I had harbored the retro idea that Quincy was still a village. Camped at huge totally empty Wompatuck State Park where Truman and I got terribly lost for hours in a maze of empty roads and campsites walking in circles for miles. Just as I was beginning to fear dehydration and freezing temperatures in this Twilight Zone, a man with a backpack came walking out of the woods and pointed out where I had taken a wrong turn on my map. He certainly didn't resemble any angel I've ever seen, but for Truman and me this fellow had wings.

 

OUR TOWN
The next interesting town was Peterborough, New Hampshire near Mount Monadnock where many of The Ten painted. The town itself is very self-aware of its art and literature, being the model for Thornton Wilder's play "Our Town," and is the home of the MacDowell Colony where grants are provided for creative time. The Sharon Arts Center is a descendent of a loosely knit artists group--Thayer, Brush, Kent and Benson; two literary giants --Twain and Kipling worked nearby. Truman and I paid homage at the graveside of Willa Cather at the Joffrey Meeting House in the next little town. That night I heard a moose, an owl and something howling...wolves? Not to mention the town bell, every single hour. So much noise for such a little town: bulldozers, traffic, bells, clangers, shouts and howlers. Oy.

 

A WEDDING
Metaphorical bells were ringing in New London, New Hampshire at the home of old friends, Ellen and George Robertson who were hosting the wedding of beautiful daughter Jane to Pennsylvania detective Rob Turner. Jane packs a gun herself as a police officer in the same town. Feeling safe, the entire entourage lived it up for four days until the ceremony held in front of the loveliest lake bearing large loons and a trembling surface shimmering in innovative patterns, by a pretty Scottish garden blooming late, under a rose-decked arbor and in back of the gorgeous house that George built. What a wedding! Even Jim flew in for this rare treat.

 

NEW HAMPSHIRE, ANOTHER FAVORITE
On every trip so far, there has been an extraordinary state that stood out for me from among the others for different reasons. Among them are Texas, Nebraska, Kentucky, Florida, Louisiana and Ohio.Now I want to add New Hampshire to the top ten. In addition to the Robertson's Little Sunapee Lake, there was the amazing home and studio in Cornish of Augustus St. Gaudens, (1848-1907) the finest sculptor America (and Ireland) has ever produced, who not only carved the Diana at the PMFA, the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial, the Robert Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Memorial in Boston, the Wm. Tecumseh Sherman Memorial in NYC and Clover Adams's grave memorial in Rock Creek Park Cemetery, but also the Corcoran's own bas relief of Mr. and Mrs. McVeagh, its allegorical relief, plus hundreds of others. The estate is magnificent, its studio grand, the view of Mt. Monadnock thrilling. And right next door is the Cornish-Windsor Covered Bridge over the Connecticut River--the longest in America. Put these on the list of best things.

Swinging back through the northern part of New Hampshire moving west from Maine to Vermont, I found landscape a-plenty along the US Forest Service's 35-mile Kancamagus (Penacook Confederacy Chief) Scenic Byway from Conway to Lincoln. By now, the leaves were turning into the hoped-for hues here and there, and when I got to Franconia Notch on a gorgeous sunny morning filled with brilliant light, the freshest air, great rolling clouds over multicolored and bright-blue hills all agitated in shape and changing with every turn in the road, boy! I knew I was seeing something very special. A group of Russian children (without a shred of accent) having a picnic at Echo Lake fell in love with Truman and cajoled their non-English speaking parents into taking roll after roll of film posing with him. If he shows up on a St. Petersburg dog poster, a postal service stamp or in a Moscow film house, he wants royalties.Truman and I camped and tramped all over the Notch's landmarks: The Basin, a swirling rock formation admired by Thoreau: The Old Man's mountain profile and an uphill, mile-long hike to the Flume, a lava-washed gorge with pretty waterfalls. All this beauty was seen after the extraordinary experience of Maine.

 

DOWN EAST
Next to the famous Bath Iron Works shipbuilding company is the Maine Maritime Museum, a fitting historical accompaniment with its working schooner and authentic sheds that reproduce the sights, sounds and purpose of the American shipbuilding process from its 19th century beginning. Torrid paintings of shipwrecks off Pemaquid Point were fascinatingly placed next to lovely, delicate models of the same ships that went down.Then Truman and I had the great treat of staying with Suzanne and Charlie Misner over in Sheepscot Bay, South Bristol. Charlie took us out on the water for an exhilarating boat ride around Christmas Cove. Everything we saw and consumed was either beautiful or delicious, like the Indo-Orange lobster and yellow-white kerneled corn we ate near striking Pemaquid Light so that when Truman and I left, loaded with borrowed books and warm hugs, we also packed good film for some interesting paintings-to-be. These are some of the things that stand out for me in Maine:

• Huge cruise ships docked at Bar Harbor disgorging tourists by the thousands (from the top of Cadillac Mountain on Mt. Desert Island in Acadia National Park).

• A surreal silver sky emblazoned with bizarre cloud formations and an intense veiled sunlight.

• Montpelier, the mansion on a hill built by General Henry Knox (GWs trusted Revolutionary War scrapper) that looks exactly like the White House and can be seen for a mile in Thomaston.

• The scenic turnouts at Thunder Hole, Otter Cliffs and Egg Rock Island on the 27-mile Park Loop Road.

After Maine and a second look at the Granite State with its White Mountain sweeps, I found Vermont's beautiful Green Mountains graced with spectacular weather--sunny and clear as light. I drove in and out of them looking in vain for Brookfield, the hometown of my friend Sara. Though I never found it, I saw much of Vermont's vastness, its valleys and farms decorated with black and white cows, adorable towns filled with enthusastic citizens having bake and homemade soap sales in front of ancient steepled churches and understood how the clarity of Vermont still lives inside Sara, lending her the pristine qualities of a crystal bell.

 

THE "KEY TO THE CONTINENT"
The weather turned moody as I headed up the western side of the Green Mountains on New York Rt. 22 along Lake Champlain's ribbon of water toward Fort Ticonderoga, mad at myself for forgetting to buy some of that amazing Vermont cheese but got over it when, there at the confluence of Lake George, Lake Champlain and Hudson River channels, was the star-shaped fort itself, the "Gibraltar of the North."

The strength of the Fort exceeds ye most sanguine imagination. Nature and Art are joined to render it impregnable. - Eli Forbush, Massachusetts soldier, 1759

Built early on by the French in 1755 on top of a Mohawk trading post, it served as a fur-trade protectorate for the connecting waterway between Canada and the American colonies. It wasn't impregnable though, British general Jeffery Amherst captured and rebuilt the fort in 1759 only to lose it to Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys in a surprise attack in 1775. One more big battle recaptured the fort for the British in 1777 with General Burgoyne leading the fray, but they abandoned and burned all the buildings on both sides of Lake Champlain later that year and the fort was never garrisoned again. It had been essential to three big nations and busy hosting all our important Revolutionary Generals and political figures, including a visit by Benjamin Franklin. Now fully restored once again, its little museum has a terrific collection of weaponry from the period, a fascinating story line and surprisingly good paintings.

 

SKIRTING THE ADIRONDACKS
Traveled fast then, down New York Route 9N along the invisible Lake George, so developed you can't even see it, and before long pulled into a campsite near Hudson, New York. And there it was, still delicate and fanciful, forever dressed up in its Moorish best; lovely Olana, the home of Frederic and Isabel Church, its patterns, abutments, spires, towers, colonnades, arches, stone, brick and tile designs competing with the thrilling Hudson River view and designed gardens, walkways and ponds. CLOSED! Also draped in scaffolding, but I could draw the interior without looking.

 

THE CITIES AND ENDURING FRIENDSHIPS
There were adventures lying ahead and so swift was the passage from Olana to home where I retired the RV, rented a minivan and presented it to the doorman of the Plaza Hotel in New York City for weekend parking. My California girlfriends were flying in from Sacramento for a ten-day reunion-vacation. We had a two-bedroom luxury suite that resonated with film and literary history and plans to visit Ellis Island, go on city tours and see a Broadway play. After that, a few days of sweet repose back at the farm with a dinner at the Inn at Little Washington, spa/massage, gardening and naps before ending this dream with a final weekend in another two-bedroom suite at the Four Seasons in Washington, DC, with even more dinners, museums, driving tours and a superb walking tour of Georgetown by dear friend, Gale Clarry. My job: cook, drive and say funny things. Their job: laugh at my jokes and pay hotel bills...! My favorite memories from these ten days:

Now to settle down again to paint through a long winter's night before setting out once more in the spring for the large northern states--Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana and the Dakotas, adding seven more to the many states visited so far.

 

All the best from your friends,