Friday, February 24, 2017

Winter, so Ephemeral

We made it back from Sarasota, as you can see by some of the last photos I captured while walking the beaches of Anna Maria (and a sunset from our balcony).

Three days after our arrival in the Boston area, we were hit with a blizzard. I have photos of the storm coming in, and more photos of our XC ski adventures. Speaking of XC ski adventures, we took a trip with an AMC (Appalachian Mountain Club) group to the Maine Huts, where you ski into a hut and stay overnight. They feed you well, and, for a fee, take care of your luggage as well. It's it's a pretty cool setup in Central Western Maine. They are planning on huts from the NH border up to Moosehead Lake. Right now there are 4 huts, about 12 miles from each other. We stayed at two of the huts over 3 nights, and 4 days of skiing. The huts are remote, so are off-the-grid...powered by solar and by propane, with hot showers, heating, and composting toilets. The approach there is to source the building of the huts with local materials and local workers, and similarly to source the food from local resources as well. You can find out more at mainehuts.org.  We lucked out when we were there, as it had just snowed earlier in the week and we skied in fresh powder for two days. The third day of skiing was very warm, so the snow softened, but then froze overnight, so we had a bit of an icy ski on the way out on Monday of the 3-day weekend. However, Monday was sunny and the sun shone on the snow and the water and through the trees, and the light was beautiful. I hope you enjoy these photos.


Highlights of Maine Huts Hut-to-Hut Trip, President's Day Weekend








Lake skiing, Flagstaff Lake, ME



























































































































































Snow, Driving in Snow, Driving Snow

These first two photos are of the second storm that came to NE on February 12, as I was driving back to the Boston area. The next photos are of a romp after the first storm. There are a few storm photos from the cupola, and then the results of roof clearing in Carlisle.










Anna Maria, Final Shots

Lone mourning dove in the evening, beach-walking, and sunsets.











Final sunsets: