The Region

Saturday we spent the day on the Franconia Ridge Loop, the best trail I've been on so far in New England. It's got everything--peaks, waterfalls, 360 degree views, woods, river crossings, holly berries--all in a hearty 6 hour hike. We started on the old Bridal path which was a strenuous but short hike up to the top of Mount Lafayette (5,2000 feet), where we had lunch with a brilliant view of the Mt. Washington and the Presidential Range. From there we bundled up with all our layers to brave a blustery jaunt across the ridge to Mt. Lincoln and then Little Haystack. To add a bit of excitement, two jets made a close flyby over the trail. The final 3 mile leg took us down the Falling Waters trail, the first half of which we skied down as much as walked, on a few inches of soggy leftover snow. Towards the end the trail wove in and out of several streams that eventually joined into a series of waterfalls, a beautiful way to round out an already enjoyable hike.

More photos

Some sounds from the hike (700kb mp3)

Yesterday we took a pleasant bike ride around the Eastern Point area of Gloucester, a peninsula that sticks out into Gloucester Harbor. I've driven around the loop any times, but it was only as we began exploring some of the side roads that we discovered entire areas that we didn't realize existed. Following one such road took us back among the summer houses of the absurdly rich, one of which was the Beauport, former home of interior designer Henry Davis Sleeper. Eventually we ended up at the Eastern Point Lighthouse and the Gloucester Tidebreak. Walking out to the end afforded us fine views of both the lighthouse and downtown Gloucester.

On our way home we swung through the Rocky Neck Art Colony, which the oldest active art colony in the country. Unfortunately, most of the galleries were closed for the day, and most everything else seemed to closed for the season.

Yesterday I spent the day in Providence at the Rhode Island School of Design, where I gave a talk in Anne Tate's course "American Communities in the 20th Century: Civics and Sustainability." She was interested in having me present some of my dissertation research and make connections between community planning and online technologies. It was good to have a live audience to help me think through my project in fresh ways, and gearing it toward future architects and planners forced me to clarify what claims I was qualified to make. The title of my talk, "Placemaking in a Digital World," seems overblown in hindsite, since my goal was simply to provide a bit of context for our discussion of how the web might be used to strengthen towns and cities (their final project is to create plans for revitalizing urban communities). But the discussion seemed fruitful, and I enjoyed the chance to observe how learning happens in a design setting like RISD. 

This photo of Anne's office shows a model of Providence that represents the downtown area which will be freed up for development as a result of the I-195 re-rerouting project (Providence's version of the Big Dig).  

I bought this painting from Grant Hanna, a student of my friend Tim, at a show Tim hosted up in Lanesville. As soon I get it framed, it will hang in my room.

Yesterday Cathy and I headed up to Cape Ann to visit Tim and Meg and explore Dogtown Commons, the nature preserve that makes up much of the inland area of Gloucester. It has a colorful history stretching back to the early colonists, full of tales of the pirates, witches, and widows who supposedly inhabited it.

One of our goals was to track down Babson's Boulders, a string of large stones with inspirational sayings engraved on them, commissioned by the millionaire philanthropist Roger Babson during the Great Depression. Since I'm applying for a job right now, I was particularly interested in finding the "Get a Job" stone, hoping to tap into its good luck properties. According to the geocache desciption we used to locate the rock:

Local legend and lore says that if you are seeking employment that you should kiss the large boulder found at these coordinates and pour a fifth of Bourbon on it for better luck on your search.

Not having any bourbon might hurt my chances a bit, but I still feel good about making the pilgrimage.

We ended the day at Halibut Point, hoping to catch some action from Tropical Storm Ophelia, but there wasn't much sign of her. Nonetheless, the views were as great as they alway are.  

More pictures of our Dogtown hike

As the rements of hurricane Ivan soaked Boston for most the day on Saturday, Joel and I decided to spend a lazy day around the house, resting up for a week of siteseeing. To prepare for our trip to Cape Ann today, we watched The Perfect Storm last night, a prerequisite that neither of us had seen and which we felt would get us in the spirit to hang out in Gloucester. One of the first things we did on our drive around Cape Ann today was to visit the Fisherman's Memorial and view the Wall of Remembrance, which lists the names of over 5000 Gloucesterman who have lost their lives at sea since 1623.

While wandering down one of the back streets of Bearskin Neck, Rockport, I ran across this sign guarding someone's parking space. Not only is it a phonetically accurate spelling of the Gloucester accent, but also playfully reminds me of pre-pin yin phonetic approximations of Chinese. I'd love to meet the designer. Well done.

I created this map of my Tuesday bike ride to experiment with different ways to visualize gps data (my route is the heavy black line). This time I used GPS Visualizer , a free online application that converts gpx files into svg maps that then can be converted to JPEGs. The process involves too many steps at this point, but the result is not too bad.