Lobsters, Pharaohs, and guitars...Oh my!
On my last day in Bar Harbor area, Brewers arrived and we went to a lobster pound for supper. I dined on lobster and mosquitos dined on me.
Thursday, I headed for New York and arrived at KOA north in Newburgh NY (75 miles N of NYCity and 50 miles N of Carol D in Pearl River). Good wifi and a hole in the tree cover for DirecTV @$55.00/night.
On Friday we reminisced about friends who have passed on and previous dive trips.
Sat we took in a lecture at the Cloisters, a museum devoted to medieval architecture. The lecture turned out to be a walking tour of the museum and especially the cloister gardens, learning about the magical, medicinal, and culinary plants found there. The highlight of the tour was in the unicorn tapestry room where she pointed out the food plants and medicinal herbs in the tapestries, finishing off with the deeper layers of christian symbols and allegories.
As we left ( and it was starting to rain) the guard reminded us that our admission was valid at the Metropolitan Museum as well till 9 PM! So off we went and got to see ancient egyptian displays plus central asia and japan...a treat.
About 5:30 PM, we heard live music and traced it to a piano/string quintet playing in the mezzanine cafe. We scored a table within good hearing and relaxed with wine, cheese, and olives accompanied by Beethoven!
This was more walking than I usually do, so got to enjoy 9 hrs of sleep.
Sunday was hot and very humid so we drove around the local area and along the Hudson.
Monday transited down to Chet's in NE Pennsylvania. Very breezy day. Hywy 209 down to Stroudsberg is a well maintained road through a fed recreation area with a 45 MPR speed limit and no big trucks allowed...fun relaxed drive.
Today, Chet took me to the Martin guitar factory in Nazareth PA where we were the only people on the one hr tour. The very knowledgeable guide ( who showed us the pearl inlay he had just finished) must have liked our enthusiasm, so we got a 90 min tour. Our 2:30 PM tour was after most workers had left for the day. Thus the morning tour would probably be even better. The range of models made here is huge, from mainly laminate low end for a few hundred dollers through midrange $1-5,000.00 standard models on to $100,000.00 custom made really fancy jobs with pearl inlay everywhere. The attention to detail, the extensive quality control (no seconds are ever sold- all get broken up), and the areas where robots have infiltrated the assembly line are really neat. Robots handle the polishing of the bodies against 5 ft diameter wheels. Another station has the newly assembled but stringless instrument held in a stressed position to simulate string tension while the robot measures the hight of each fret (a low fret would cause buzzing). Sound amplification can be built in 2 ways: with a sensor under the bridge (looks like a stiff wire) or a microphone placed within the cavity near the central hole.
An excellent museum is just off the lobby with a superb history of this family company since the early 1800s. I especially liked the readability of the text (no mottled backgrounds, just plain white text on dark monochrome backgrounds). Off the gift shop was a small room with several guitars on the wall for people to try. Another glassed in room was for consultations. While we waited for our tour, we could see a solemn discussion over an open guitar case (looking not unlike a coffin) containing a guitar with several broken strings. This was a first class tour!
