all the snow

it's been quite a while...but i'm back with a super-giant photopost. we got about 10-15 inches of snow on saturday, and since i am on break and had all the time, i decided to go out walking and take the obligatory "i spent two years in maine..." pictures.

++++drumroll+++++

i bundled up around 11am and emerged from my apartment to find my car like this. i cleaned off the door so i could retrieve my shovel and scraper and set to work. it took me about thirty minutes, and i was clearly sweating. however...exhausted as i was, i decided to continue on with my walk.

this is the college park sign, maybe mom and dad remember how not on the ground this sign is. anyway...you can also see the lackluster job done by the college park snowplow.

now down the sidewalk...

and some vanity shots:







haha...i just kinda snuck that last one in there. anyway...i decided that since there is not much to look at in the city of orono, maine, i should go to campus and get some pictures there. i took the grove street entrance which is basically just a stroll through a neighborhood and an odd little jaunt through a storage facitily(?) for campus forrestry majors, i think. this is a mound of snow and me asking you if you can see how high the snow is. clearly taller than me.

almost on campus, i found this gem. i don't know what happened there, but i have a guess.

and now for the UMaine campus vanity shots:











(remember this bench)







the bear!

i did a little bit of adventuring in some low-hanging trees.

and...oh no! got stranded in a particularly swampy bit of parking lot. eh, well...this is why i wore the road crew boots!

since the multiple snow events, the roads in maine have become extremely potted. most of them look like this:

and we have this sign at a particularly rough patch on campus:

a few more specific campus shots. the library ->

the sidewalk we take everyday to neville ->

remember the bench i pointed out earlier? i was pretty tired by this point, so i sat on it :)

alright, you've seen college park and the UMaine campus. so, this is what happens when sidewalks aren't plowed after each snow event. this is when the snowlegs come in handy.

this is the sign for the hotel where mom and dad stayed this summer. very much buried, the front of this hotel.

watch out for all these things, but don't mind the six/seven foot snow banks that completely block vision.

and now, ladies and gentleman, the river:

the barrier they have set up to protect drivers and pedestrians from wind and ice.

through one of the 'windows':

and the view from the other side of the bridge:

this is the park that i took pictures of this summer. it looks only slightly altered.

and finally, the sloppy walk home.


so...as you can see, maine is quite wintry. the snow is hanging around so far, but we are supposed to get ice and rain in the next couple of days. that will be interesting, but at least the roads are clean. i feel better having now provided you guys with pictures that were not taken from my apartment window.

i hope you enjoyed them!