Let it be known that the state of Maine is a pretty
cosmopolitan place. On your way to
Bethel, the charming, classic clapboard-and-green-shutters New England willage
near the Sunday River ski area, you pass through Poland, Norway, and
Paris. So it is true: you can get there from here, and you really
couldn’t be much more in the center of things.
But you are left to your own devices to figure out how far you must go
to get there. As we drove through the
night on our way to our ski weekend, we kept seeing reassuring signs pointing
the way to Bethel, but none which could tell us if we had two or 20 or 50 miles
to go. The increasingly dark road wended
its way across the moonless Maine countryside, through towns too small to have
much more than a gas station and a Mallard Mart, but never too small for a
local cop to be lurking, waiting to nab any speeding folks from away.
This is not entirely fair:
Paris is actually quite a metropolis, birthplace of Hannibal Hamlin, obviously
the seat of Oxford County, and the biggest town we passed through on this
journey.
Anyway, eventually you realize that you are part of a
sort-of Santa’s sleigh of cars, red taillights glowing ahead, most with MA
plates, all heading toward the same destination. It is quite a relief to arrive at the
brightly lit Bethel Inn. Originally
built in 1913, and used primarily at that time for “wealthy business magnates”
who came to take the cure with a local quack I mean respected doc who treated
nervous breakdowns, the Bethel Inn is a pretty classic New England joint. Not quite as posh as the Woodstock Inn, and
with I am sorry to say wildly uneven food, but aggressively cheerful in the
face of what has been so far a crappy winter for the New England tourist trade
this year.
Among the many comforts and striking feature of the Bethel
Inn is its musical soundtrack. The main
dining room offers a startling EZ listening version of Pink Floyd’s Wish You
Were Here, played mostly on tenor sax.
Played at every meal, the tune accompanies you, on wings of song, on
your five trips to the copious breakfast buffet.
But we’re not here for comfort or muzak, or even for
make-your-own-waffles. We’re here for
skiing, so we are off on the local shuttle the next morning for Sunday
River. All the Mountain Explorer shuttle
drivers are straight out of central casting:
vaguely dour, older gents, wearing billed caps with earflaps. Perfectly polite, they never smile, even at
the charming Isabel who is sporting a giant blaze orange Packers hat. But they do say ayup when responding in the
affirmative.
Sunday River is a pretty big area, spread over several
peaks, with lots of lifts and a surprising number of ugly lodges. We’re talking Vanserg Hall ugly, which means
US Army training classrooms, ca. 1948.
Calling John Ashworth! In true
New England fashion, it is nearly impossible to figure out exactly where you
are on the mountain because there are signs pointing to where you want to go,
but none actually saying what trail you are on.
Still, with Isabel in ski school, Bill and Peter and I
manage to check out several of the peaks on a windy Saturday. This time of year, the sun is riding so low
in the sky that it barely hits most of the area, and then only for a couple of
hours in the middle of the day. So there
is some ice, and some wind, and while the trails aren’t too crowded, there are some
lift lines. In short, it is a pretty
classic New England ski day.
A deciding factor in choosing any lodging for les Laskin
enfants is the presence of a swimming pool.
Even after a day of throwing themselves down icy mountainsides, they
will happily exhaust themselves further in a pool. At the Bethel Inn, it is an outdoor pool,
heated to 92 degrees, and entered from an inside portal. To get to the hot tub, you actually have to
exit the pool – outside – temp. nine degrees – and then climb into the hot
tub. Brave Peter and I actually did
this, but the main issue is that to get out of the hot tub you have to climb
back out – outside – temp. nine degrees – then jump back in the pool which now
feels like a refreshingly cool dip on a hot summer day except that it is not a
hot summer day, it is – nine – degrees. It
is in fact pretty atmospheric to be out in that pool, in the dark because it is
all of five o’clock in the evening, with the stars coming out above and the
steam billowing all around. But I found
the sauna more to my liking after that little in-n-out experience.
Conversation had at the pool portal (so much steam you can’t
actually see the bathers):
Me: Bill?
Voice: Yes?
Me: Bill Laskin?
Voice: No.
Voice of Peter Laskin:
hahahahaha, Mom, that’s not Dad!!
Then there are two small saunas, which means you have to
open both doors if you are looking for someone, so there is a lot of running
around and shouting and giggling (we are not the only family here). It’s all a bit like a kind of Nordic French
farce.
Here’s another thing about the Bethel Inn: they serve local beef, and are quite proud of
that fact. And I can say that the
enormous slab of prime rib that I was served was possibly the best prime rib
ever. Perhaps even a little bit better
with the gentle strains of Pink Floyd in the background, because the same track
is played at dinner, too.
Ski trips, for me anyway, are usually fueled less by fine
beef and more by Advil and sugar, accompanied by a kind of fragrant soundtrack
of excessively sweet cinnamon buns, wood smoke, and frozen nose hairs. Now we can add the omnipresence of those
little chemical hand and foot heaters to the iconic imagery. Our second, and last, day of skiing featured
below-zero temperatures, the coldest that I’ve ever skied in, and I think Bill
too. It was a two runs and done kind of
day. It will come as no surprise that
Peter Laskin is a world-class whiner (takes after his mother) but to his great
credit, once thawed out with hot chocolate, is always game to go back for
more. That says a lot for the
future. We went through a lot of little
chemical hand and foot heaters this day, and Bill got a smidge of frostbite on
the tip of his nose!
Sunday evening, we gathered around the glowing . . .
television, but the less said about the Packers the better.
Despite the cold, when the sun was out, it was beautiful as
only a snow-covered New England landscape can be, blue and white and trees and
smoke spirals. Our last morning we took
a little walk around the grounds of the Bethel Inn, famous, we are told, for
its cross-country trails, which were finally opened this weekend for the first
time this winter. We even found another
of those dour Maine men, this one who was mad at us for walking on the
x-country trails. “You’ve ruined the
trail!” he said. Maybe he was mad
because he’d spent all morning grooming all 30 miles of trails in about
four-degree weather, and here come some dumb city folk clomping about and
destroying his good work.
OK, we get it, we’ll be on our way.
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