Schenectady, New York

 I could not have asked for a finer finish to my six-week circuit of the Northeast corner of North America with four final Carnegies, each a gem, beginning with that in Gloversville—butterfly-shaped with a domed corner entrance enhanced by an assortment of frills.  It was one of the few, and the first in a while, that had Carnegie in prominence on its facade, rather than merely Library or Free Library or Public Library.  

As with many Carnegies, a water color capturing all the library’s glory could be found within.  This one was unique with all its added embellishments, including a horse drawn carriage and people in formal attire walking by.  The painter also chose to replace “Carnegie” above its entrance with “Free to All.”  The painting was done by the architect, so possibly he made it before the library was constructed when it was later decided to put “Carnegie” on it instead of “Free to All,” as “Gloverville Free Library” was etched above “Carnegie” on the actual library and not in the painting.

I met a photographer at the next Carnegie in Johnstown, just four miles south, and complained that I didn’t get as worthy of a photo of the Gloverville library as I would have liked shooting into the low morning sun. He said he could send me a better photo and also one of the Johnstown library, as I had to closely crop mine to remove a parked car out front.  The person who parked the car didn’t know why I’d left my bike and was walking away from the library across the street to take a picture of it and asked if I was lost.  These easterners aren’t bashful in speaking up.

This first pair of libraries early in the day was removing the sour taste I had from the imitation Carnegie library I had come upon in Valley Falls the day before, the only one in seventy miles on the lightly traveled back roads of New York after leaving Laura and Ken.  It dated to 1913 and was funded by a local of wealth, recruited by a women’s group that had only managed to scrape up $100 until he came along and gave $4,200.  The history of the library gave no explanation why they didn’t turn to Carnegie.  The lackluster exterior was matched by a plaque inside the entry that misspelled library.  Funds were so tight they didn’t replace it.  

A few miles past Johnstown the road tagged along with the Mohawk River which I followed to the next Carnegie in Amsterdam and then to Schenectady.  I thought at first it was the Hudson River, but I would have had to continue another fifteen miles beyond Schenectady to meet up with it when the Mohawk merged with it.  It was a most welcome flat stretch to end these travels.  My legs were finally feeling depleted after two lengthy days of climbing spending a little extra time on the bike to ensure I wasn’t late for my train.

The Amsterdam Carnegie was perched several blocks up from the river giving it a little extra prominence.  When I told the photographer in Johnstown that I was headed to Amsterdam he blurted, “That’s the hometown of Kirk Douglas.  There’s a park there named for him.”  I wouldn’t have known if he hadn’t mentioned it, as there was no sign to it nor “Welcome to Amsterdam, home of Kirk Douglas.”  The park was just a block from the library along a fast rushing creek with a series of waterfalls heading to the Mohawk River.  The park was small and its plaque splattered with bird droppings.  The park had been renamed for Douglas in 1985 when he came to town to be the grand marshall of a parade celebrating the town’s centennial.

I was granted a slight tailwind and minimal descent to Schenectady, making the final fifteen miles of these travels all the more celebratory and triumphant, a just reward for the three thousand miles I had pedaled.  I’d be arriving in Schenectady four hours before my train’s 7:33 departure, so I had no worries other than finding the Carnegie on the campus of Union College.  I had no information on its location or its present name other than it was now a dorm according to the not-always-reliable Wikipedia.  

With time to spare I thought I could roam around the small campus and recognize the features of the Carnegie, and so I did.  Besides the columns and noble exterior it was identified by “Public Library.”  That “Public” was a slight disqualifier, and that it was in a corner of the campus, implying it might have been the city library and just incorporated by the college, but it’s new name “Webster House” and locked doors and soft drink machine just inside the doors all confirmed it was a dorm.  I went to the new library in the center of the campus to confirm that Webster House had been funded by Carnegie, but the student there couldn’t find the information in her computer or from an older colleague in back.  They gave me the email of special collections to pose my queries to.  I heard back that it had never been the college library, it just acquired it in 1969 for $40,000 since it was on the corner of the campus when Schenectady replaced it with a larger library. It was used to host student activities for a few years before being converted into a dorm.

As dazzling as the Carnegie was a domed building in the center of the campus known as The Nott, a memorial to Eliphalet Nott, the longest serving president of any college or university in the United States, sixty-two years beginning in 1804 at the age of thirty-one until his death in 1866.  He assumed the presidency nine years after the college was founded in 1795, the second in New York after Columbia.  During his tenure Union was known as one of the “Big Four” along with Harvard, Yale and Princeton.  

The construction of the sixteen-sided Nott was begun in 1858 and wasn’t completed until 1879.  It contains a gallery and has space for theatrical productions.  The person who verified Webster House had been the city library and not the college library included a newspaper article from 2010 on the four Carnegies in the region I had just visited with the information that in 1902 Carnegie contributed $40,000 to convert The Nott into a library, which it served as until 1961 when it was replaced by its present library.  He also gave the school $100,000 in 1910 to build its engineering building.

The train station was just a mile away.  It took just a few minutes to stuff my four panniers and tent into my duffle, that had served extra duty on the colder nights when I pulled it up over the bottom half of my sleeping bag.  That extra layer made a big difference of retaining my body heat.  If I jiggled the hood on the sleeping bag so it didn’t fully cover my head, I could feel the warmth surrounding me pouring out as if through a chimney.  I didn’t stuff the sleeping bag into the duffle, taking it as hand luggage in case there was space on the floor for me to sprawl and put it to one final use.

Cold was just one of the many features of this trip.  All the rural fire stations distinguished this region from others, as did the many small cemeteries.

Nothing though was more ubiquitous than the Adirondack chairs.

They were truly everywhere. I rarely saw them being used in these cold times, but they were there at the ready.

There was truly a surplus.

I thought they might have an interesting history, but all that Wikipedia had to say was they were invented between 1900 and 1903 by a Thomas Lee in Westport, New York.  Its high back and tipped forward seat and high arm rest design was patented by his friend Harry C. Bunnell.  The present modified design with a fan-shaped slatted back was patented by another in 1938.

The many rock fences will be another lasting image from these travels.  

They took many forms.  

The most enduring image though will be that from the entry to Ken and Laura’s home and of course my time with them.

This trip also distinguishes itself as the first of any length in the US that I didn’t find a neckerchief along the road. Evidently they are not de rigeur in the Northeast, unlike the rest of the country.  I saw lots of wash cloths and an ample number of license plates, at least one from every state except for Vermont and Massachusetts, the latter of which I was only in for a short spell.  It is nice to add New York, New Hampshire, Maine, New  Brunswick and Nova Scotia to my collection, and a bonus from New Jersey that made its way to New York.  This was my best haul ever.  

And it was an equally exemplary haul of Carnegies—forty-eight in forty-three days, twenty in Maine, twelve in New York, ten in New Hampshire, five in Vermont and one in New Brunswick, bringing my overall total to 1,163.  Plus there was the one that wasn’t in Nova Scotia and a partially funded Carnegie in Augusta, Maine. 

Williamstown, Massachusetts

I had to check my blog to see how long it had been since I visited Laura and Ken on a spring bike tour when they were living in Oberlin, Ohio.  It seemed like just a few years ago, though I knew it had been at least ten.  It was actually sixteen.  Having let such a long time pass between connecting with these exceptional friends was a gross negligence on my part, especially since they had been regularly asking when I was going to include them on a bike tour. It seemed as if I was biking everywhere in the US except in their neck of the woods.

I first met them some thirty years ago when Ken was working for the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago and was a fellow volunteer at Facets.  We’d seen countless movies together, not only in Chicago, but at Telluride,  where I’d recruited them to the volunteer ranks.  We also shared a commitment to the bicycle, further deepening our friendship.

It was a sad day when Ken accepted a position at the New York Fed, but I was at least able to join Ken driving a U-Haul with all their belongings to Brooklyn, a U-Haul with a faulty fuel gauge we learned when we ran out of gas somewhere in Ohio, putting a bike to use to go to a not too distant gas station for fuel.  After ten years in New York, Ken elected to switch to academia, teaching economics at Oberlin for four years before moving on to Williams in Williamstown when it offered him a position with tenure.  

I had been eager to see their new environment in the northwest corner of Massachusetts, putting it off until I took my Carnegie crusade to New England, which I knew I could do at any time.  It had been, “I’ll do it next year,” for all too many years.  I was happy it was finally going to happen this year and wouldn’t let the increasingly wintry conditions deter me from continuing on to Massachusetts, when it was tempting to stop biking.

The final fifty-mile stretch to Williamstown was over the two longest climbs of these travels, one of twelve miles and another of six.  It was the closest I came to five thousand feet climbed in one day and in just sixty miles.  Neither climb was marked by a summit sign, though the longest, Hogback, had a scenic overlook and restaurant.  

When I alerted Laura from the library in Wilmington after crossing Hogbsck that I was thirty miles away and wondered if I had much more climbing ahead, she warned me of one more big climb and if it slowed me enough to prevent me from reaching them before dark, she could come pick me up somewhere along the way.  And being ever-considerate, often replying to blog posts with suggestions of places to visit wherever I might be,  she added that she could drive me to Schenectady, seventy-five miles west, if I was concerned about making the train I had booked for two days hence. Neither were necessary, but I greatly appreciated the gesture.  I  reached their home shortly before dark after one last steep climb to their cul-de-sac, so steep that Laura at first didn’t wish to move there when they were house-hunting. 

The entry to their driveway was marked by a dazzling arched stone sculpture constructed by their twenty-eight year old son Iain, who works for an architectural landscaping firm in Boston.  Their yard was also marked by various cairns, just as that of Janina and I.  Janina would have liked their grass-free front yard too, turned into a flower bed.  The back yard was home to three chickens.

Greeting Laura and Ken was a joyful reunion.  We eased into a conversation that we seemed to have left off just yesterday as they sliced vegetables for a salmon and dahl stew while I sat in a chair and nibbled on nuts and grapes and pasta.  It was like being home and reunited with brother and sister.

My post-dinner options were a movie at the local art cinema where they volunteer or a dvd or attending the monthly Planning Board meeting where Ken was the most recently elected of the five members.  Nothing would be better than an immersion into local issues.  Ken had won the election by going door-to-door in this community of eight thousand along with two thousand students at the college, not a university, as it doesn’t have a graduate program.  His lone opponent was a woman of a prominent local family.  Not even breaking the stranglehold of the all-male board could defeat Ken, as his rare combination of personal warmth and brilliance of a Harvard PhD prevailed.  

All twenty or so seats in the room were occupied when the meeting began.  I sat next to a blue-haired woman who said she had just registered to run in next year’s Chicago marathon.  When the meeting adjourned I was the lone member of the audience remaining.  The two main topics of the two-hour session were the specifications of a new fire station and the regulations on the construction of smaller homes.  Ken had done considerable research on the standards other communities had established for the residential housing.  

It was as fascinating as a movie listening to the board members and the town manager, who serves in lieu of a mayor, hashed out all the details.  It was a fine evening other than Ken not being able to charge his e-car at the lone charging station in the parking lot, as someone who wasn’t using it had parked in the spot.  

Though it was later than I’d been staying up, I was happy to watch a pair of twenty-two minute mockumentaries from Documentaries Now featuring Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, a favorite director of ours and his frequent actor.  As we talked afterwards Ken reminded us it was getting late and we ought to turn in, especially since I wanted an early start the next day and he had a full day of teaching.  It couldnt have been a more relaxing and fulfilling evening, as satisfying a day as if I’d dropped in on three or four Carnegies.

As it was, it had been a day without a Carnegie.  The only sight-seeing for the day had been a slight detour early in the day to the home of Rudyard Kipling, Naulahka, that he built in 1893 and lived in with his wife and two daughters until 1896.  It was on ten acres off in the woods down a dirt road bearing the name Kipling three miles north of Brattleboro.  

He was twenty-eight when he settled in Vermont and already an accomplished writer and wrote much more during his time there including the Jungle books.   He might have lived the rest of his life there if not for a dispute with his wife’s brother and anti-British sentiment in the US triggered by England being upset with the US invoking the Monroe Doctrine regarding a disagreement between Venezuela and British Guinea over the border between the two countries that remains unresolved to this day.  The lack of relations between Venezuela and British Guinea prevented me from crossing into British Guinea from Venezuela when I bicycled to the tepui region of Venezuela.  I finally gained entrance to the Guianas several years later when I bicycled three thousand miles through Brazil from Uruguay on my way to the lone Carnegie in South America. 

Four final Carnegies await me in the vicinity of Schenectady and then it is Amtrak home.

Bellows Falls, Vermont

 My route north to the Carnegie in Franklin took me through Concord, the third state capital of these travels, less than ten miles from where I spent the night in my tent. It was another morning of cold, just twenty-five degrees, cold enough to turn my chocolate milk into a slushy drink, but the sun was shining, the road was flat, there was no wind nor traffic on this Sunday morning, so my heart was light and bright.  I’d had a fine campsite on a thick mattress of leaves and pine needles with a minimal obstacle course of limbs and  fallen trees to wade through from the road.

The towering, domed capital building was right on highway three passing through the middle of Concord, following the Merrimack River.  A plaque stated it was completed in 1819 and is the oldest capital in the US in which the legislature still meets in its original chambers.

Highway three took me within a mile of Franklin, just a little ways to the east.  A tributary of the Merrimack, the Winnipesaukee, wound through Franklin right past the Carnegie.  As so often happens, that first glimpse of the unmistakable Carnegie from a block or two away gave me an instant jolt of pleasure and was equally impressive as gazing at it head-on.  And as with a good many of the Carnegies, its majesty was no less impressive than the ostentatious capital building twenty miles south.

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My flat start to the day was broken by an unexpected several mile climb in the middle of my next forty-two mile leg northwest to Lebanon on the border with Vermont.  The temperature dropped as I climbed to just above freezing.  Patches of unmelted snow from several days before lined the road confirming the cold.  The forecast was for the coldest night of the year, twenty-one degrees, and possibly into the teens.  Lebanon was a large enough city to have a handful of hotels to choose from, thanks as well to its proximity to Hanover and Dartmouth seven miles north.  If need be I could bundle up and survive the cold, but I’d gladly avail myself of a hotel on this night.

If not for that long climb I would have reached Lebanon just ust before dark, but now I knew I  would fall fifteen or twenty minutes short.  I thought I was saved from biking in the dark when I passed a two-storied ten-unit motel masquerading as a B&B eight miles before Lebanon several miles past the descent from the summit.  I had to brake and circle back to it. As I pulled into the parking lot a SUV pulled in just after me.  An older lady opened the door and asked if I was all right having seen me turn around and knowing full well that no one in their right mind would be bicycling, let alone touring, in such conditions.

I said I was just looking for a place to stay this night and asked if she was the proprietor of the B&B.  She was.  Then came the the all-important question, “How much do your rooms go for.”  

“$199 plus tax,” was the answer.  

This was the off-season and there were just a couple of cars in the parking lot.  “I’ve been camping,” I replied, “but tonight is going to be a little too cold for that.  Would you take $100 if I didn’t use the bed and put down my sleeping pad and bag?”  

“We don’t do that,” she replied.  

A few miles further with dark further descending I came upon a campground full of RVs.  A campground with a heated rest room and perhaps a common room would suffice.  Unfortunately a sign on the office of the proprietor’s house read “Closed for the season.” All those RVs were parked for the winter.  I could see someone inside, so asked if I could just pitch my tent.  He was no less accommodating than the B&B woman, telling me it was just four miles to Lebanon where I could find a motel.

Though it was nearly dark I was heading west into a sky with a slight tint of blue giving me the illusion that there was still some light to bike by, though there wasn’t other than the passing headlights and occasional street light.  Fortunately the traffic was light and I had an adequate shoulder with a white line to help guide me.  There were no cheap motels on the outskirts, so I had to continue over to Vermont and the Hotel Coolidge in White River Junction.  It was a classic old urban hotel with rooms down long hallways like a college dorm.

I leaned my bike up against the window, but before I could pass through the double doors the desk clerk greeted me most hospitably saying it would be best to bring my bike right in.  He said he had an economy room for $99 which he could reduce to $79 with an AARP discount. I’d at last met a benevolent soul.  The room came with a $4.50 voucher for breakfast at an adjoining restaurant.  That wasn’t such a bargain, as it had a limited menu, mostly deluxe smoothies that went for $9.50.  I didn’t learn that until the next morning when it opened at seven. If I’d known I would have gotten a little earlier start.

The day otherwise got off to a great start with being able to see Lebanon’s first-rate Carnegie in the light of day after having only glimpsed its shadowy majesty in the dark the night before.  It had an addition tacked to its back referred to as a “wing” and bearing the name of a governor.  

It was hilly-going the next twenty-two mikes to fhe next Carnegie in Claremont.  Having been denied an anticipated breakfast I stopped at a McDonalds for the McGriddle special, two sausage sandwiches with thick hot cakes forming the bread—920 calories for three dollars.  A sign said, “Sorry, lobby is closed.”  There was a line of eight or nine cars for the drive-up window so I went over to the nearby KFC/Taco Bell for some breakfast burritos, except the Taco Bell had withdrawn from its partnership with KFC and left town. I couldn’t spare the time for a sit-down meal at a restaurant, so just made do with my chocolate milk and cereal.

The Carnegie was only slightly less majestic than its counterpart in Lebanon and had a  much smaller seamless addition from 1923, twenty years after the library had opened and hadn’t needed another since.  A bearded older guy librarian wearing a mask pointed out a couple of framed photos of the interior of the library from its early years.  It hadn’t changed much other than the addition of computers and DVDs on the shelves.  

With Claremont I completed all the Carnegies in another state and two hours later I completed Vermont with the Carnegie in Rockingham. Unlike most, It’s addition was to its side, slightly undermining the majesty of the original.  At least one could still enter up the steps as it was from the beginning.

Finishing off two states on the same day was a first.  That’s twenty-two done.  Many of the others, such as California and Arizona and Nebraska and Florida and Georgia I have nearly completed.  A ride up the coast starting in Orlando would make quick work of Florida, Georgia, the Carolina’s, Virginia, Rhode Island and Maryland.  Another ride starting in Denver would finish off Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and the three in Northern California I have yet to get to.  Before long the US portion of the project will be complete.   Then I can swing through Australia and New Zealand for a bunch more.

Raymond, New Hampshire

 I completed  Maine’s bounty of Carnegies in Freeport, home of L.L. Bean.  The Carnegie was in the center of town next door to the outdoor company’s mothership surrounded by canoes and kayaks.  The modest Carnegie was the only one in the state that no longer served as a library.  Its present tenant is an organic market, which rents the building from the city. 

In most states not even half of the Carnegies continue in the capacity in which they began their existence.  Maine would have the highest percentage by far of its Carnegies still serving as libraries if it were not for Vermont and New Hampshire, which are at one hundred per cent.  Maine can still thump its chest, as it has considerably more Carnegies than its neighbors with eighteen compared to New Hampshire’s nine and Vermont’s four.

These states are also notable for not having torn down any of their Carnegies.  Only five other states can make such a claim, all with much fewer than Maine,  Eleven states have torn down more than New Hampshire has standing.  The two preeminent non-preservationists are California, which has razed fifty-eight of its one hundred and forty-two, and Texas twenty of thirty-two.  Illinois and Indiana have lost eighteen each of their more than one hundred. 

I managed to escape Freeport without succumbing to any of its many stores.  So many tourists are drawn to Freeport that Patagonia and Banana Republic and the Gap and other recognizable brands have stores.  The Main Street is lined with a multitude of shops, including the Mangy Moose Emporium, seeking to capitalize on the influx of shoppers. 

I continued down the coast on highway one thick with traffic and semi-urban sprawl for a dozen miles before turning inland as I approached the big city of Portland.  It took a few miles to escape the hubbub that will soon be my lot when I return home.  I was bearing down on New Hampshire, not quite making it before dark.  My final night in Maine was spent behind a row of old trailers in a parking lot on the fringe of a paltry forest.

The welcome to New Hampshire sign was in French and English.  The state’s motto of “Live Free or Die,” as adorns its license plates, harkened to an interview I just heard of the ever-outlandish Werner Herzog on Fresh Air, where he was promoting his memoir “Every Man for Himself and God Against  All.”  He said he’d rather die that undergo psychoanalysis and the same for wearing a toupee.  

A few miles across the border I arrived in another Rochester, where the first of a quick string of four Carnegies awaited me.  The gallant front hid an extended expansion behind it.  I had gotten an early post-dawn start, so even if it weren’t Veteran's Day I would have been more than an hour early for its opening. 

I arrived at Dover’s similarly gallant Carnegie ten miles south after it should have opened.  In my brief time there two others came by not knowing it was closed for Veteran’s Day. Members of the high school band in their uniforms were gathering in the parking lot preparing for a Veteran’s Day event.  

A plaque beside the entry to the library didn’t relate to its benefactor or status on the National Register of Historic Places, as such plaques generally do, but rather acknowledged those who occupied the land before those from the other side of the ocean came a-conquering.

The next Carnegie resided on the campus of the University of New Hampshire five miles south in Durham.  After being replaced as the library it took on the name of Hamilton Smith Hall and was converted into classrooms.  

I had to do some sleuthing to find it.  None of the students I asked knew of the former library or a Carnegie building.  Finally a student behind the counter at the Recreational Center searched on the internet and found the answer.  I should have recognized it when I bicycled past it by its stately columns, the only such building on the campus.  

I completed my quartet for the day in Raymond, turning west into a wind for twenty miles.  The small town had been granted a tiny grant of a mere $2,000 from Carnegie, barely a quarter of the next smallest grant in the state, the only other of less than $12,500. Though it is a rare Carnegie not constructed of brick or stone, it has endured over a century and is a most attractive building.  Its interior was more characteristic of a Carnegie, with a large wooden circulation desk and wooden tables and shelves and striking light fixtures.  My peek through the windows, however, did not reveal the portrait that always adds a final touch of grace.

Auburn, Maine



There are six ferries a day to Vinalhaven, fifteen miles out in West Penobscot Bay, where the lone Carnegie Library on an island resides.  If I didn’t make the third ferry of the day at 10:30 I’d have to take the noon ferry and return on the 3:15 pm ferry, the last of the day, arriving back in Rockland after sunset.  I was so intent on making that 10:30 ferry I set my alarm for 5:45.  

I was camped thirty-three miles away with lots of climbing ahead of me. I had hoped to get to within thirty miles, but I had my first flat since the beginning of these travels over two thousand miles ago half an hour before dark.  I hurriedly replaced the tube, deflated by a patch gone bad at a most inopportune time, and continued riding until it was too dark to continue.

There were more hills than I would have liked on my morning push to make the ferry, arriving with just five minutes to spare.  Twelve cars boarded before me, as many as the ferry could accommodate.  Bikes are charged $17.50 for a round trip, and the passenger goes free.  I, of course, was the lone cyclist.  About halfway there when we reached open water the ferry began swaying dramatically.  I had to lay down and curl up to ward off the motion-sickness I am prone to.  I nearly fell asleep I was so depleted from the effort I’d sustained to start the day.  After twenty minutes or so when the ferry came within the embrace of Vinalhaven I could arise and appreciate our picturesque entry to the ferry dock.

I had an hour and forty-five minutes to check out the library and explore the island a bit before the 1:30 ferry back.  The library was less than a mile away past a harbor full of boats.  There were stacks and stacks of traps for lobsters, the primary source of income for the island’s 1,400 residents, which doubles in the summer months.  The Prairie-style library, the lone such in Maine, was constructed of granite quarried on the island back when that rivaled lobsters for the island’s chief income.   The high-quality granite lives on in many prominent buildings including Chicago’s Board of Trade, the State Department building in the nation’s capital and the Washington Monument there, and the Brooklyn Bridge.

The library had an addition behind it from funds raised by the locals in 2007.  The librarian expected a busy winter, as she said it had been a poor lobster season, meaning it would be a long, lean winter for many of the fisherman who would take advantage of the library more than usual. As I meandered around the island, the prime feature was neatly stacked piles of lobster traps in front of the small white-painted wooden homes.

When I began the day I had hoped I might arrive in Rockland well enough before the 10:30 ferry so I could visit its Carnegie enabling to be directly on my way out of town when I returned from Vinalhaven to pile up the miles in the ninety minutes before dark.  But since I arrived in Rockland with no time to spare I had to visit its library after Vinalhaven, cutting into that valuable riding time.

The castle of a building looked out on a large expanse of grass.  Behind it was an expansive addition.  It guarded its Wi-Fi with a password of love2read.  I wanted to check to see if there had been a change in the forecast of rain starting at nine the next morning.  It had been pushed back to ten, just what I needed to reach the next Carnegie In Gardiner forty miles away before I started getting wet.  I was glad I hadn’t rushed to see it before the ferry, as I might not have been able to appreciate its palatial domed entry overseen by the Carnegie portrait.

If I didn’t need to get down the road as far as possible, I would have stopped at the Walmart for a half gallon of chocolate milk and other supplies, but I didn't wish to spare the time.  As it was, I closed to within thirty miles of Gardiner before camping and got another early start.  The precipitation came a little early at 9:30 and with it just above freezing it was some light flurries, not a nuisance at all.  

I was surprised to see a year of 1881 above the entry to the library, two years before Carnegie's first funding of a library in his Scottish hometown of Dumferline.  I asked the librarian if Carnegie had funded the library.  She said no.  Wikipedia wrong again.  She didn’t leave it at that and checked the mainememory.net website for more information. It stated that Carnegie supplemented the Gardiner in construction in 1887 with a grant of $2,500, his smallest in Maine and perhaps anywhere, and acknowledged that many don’t consider Gardiner a Carnegie, including the librarian who was helping me.  She said she had previously worked at the Lithgow library in Augusta, six miles north, and Carnegie  had contributed $7,500 to it.  Wikipedia didn’t include that among the twenty Carnegies in Maine, nor did the Maine Memory website, though it qualified more than the Gardiner library.

I had been disappointed that Augusta hadn’t been listed as having a Carnegie, as I would have liked to visit the state capital.  Now I could.  It was a pleasant ride on a bike path sandwiched between railroad tracks and the Kennebec River, though a periodic semi-blanket of wet leaves restrained my speed.  It was a steep climb up from the river to the granite fortress of a  library, which had a whole block to itself, a good portion of which was a grassy field.  

The librarian there wasn’t sure of the Carnegie connection, but a newspaper article she dug out from 1990 tracing the history of the library acknowledged that Carnegie had made the largest contribution for its construction, supplementing the  $20,000 that Llewelyn Lithgow, a local businessman, had left in his will for a library to bear his name. The librarian said that there are those who believe Llewelyn pays visits to the library, not the first haunted library I’ve come upon.

A mile a way on State Street past a roundabout stood the domed capital building, the second of these travels. Vermont’s in Montpelier is topped by a little more striking golden dome.

The thirty-one miles from Augusta to Lewiston was on a busy road.  The snow flurries were into their third hour by now and though they weren’t collecting there were snow plows out spreading salt driving along at a slightly slower speed than the traffic.  Each was tailed by a long line of cars. It made it a little treacherous when this long procession came up from behind me, led by the monster truck with the extension of its plow encroaching upon the space between us.

I arrived in Lewiston over an hour later than I expected having to make a detour up to Augusta. Dark was closing in.  The library was just off a narrow street that was a virtual pedestrian walkway lined with shops and cafes.  The substantial granite building was overwhelmed by a huge multi-story addition to serve the city’s 37,000 residents, second most in the state.  

I was damp, and with the temperature never getting much above freezing all day I was in a need of a motel.  Travel Advisor listed an Econo Lodge with breakfast six miles south by the airport in the direction I was headed.  But first was the Carnegie Library in Auburn, sister city of Lewiston, just across the Androscoggin River. With a substantial population of 24,000 it’s library too had had a large, but less obtrusive addition.  It had a tower and entry of arches virtually identical to the Carnegie in Waterville.   I was surprised there was enough light to capture a photo of it.

I was lucky there was a wide shoulder on the road to the Econo Lodge, and also that I had brought along a reflective vest, which I have gotten a lot more use of than I ever expected. With it dark by 4:30 and less than ten hours of light a day, I very much need it.  I was passing through a forest that called out to be camped in, but I didn’t dare.  And no worries of the Econo Lodge being full, as it was a huge two-story complex with only a few cars and large trucks from the nearby Maine Turnpike parked down the two long flanks of rooms.  There is no precipitation in the forecast for the next week, so hopefully this is my last indoor sleeping until I stop in on Laura and Ken in Williamstown in five days.