New England in the Fall
Colors, Scenery and History
Mike Sappingfield will present highlights of his recent adventure leading a grand tour of New England for the Sierra Club.
The meeting will be held on January 6, 7:30 PM, at the San Bernardino County Museum, 2024 Orange Tree Lane, Redlands.
An Orange County resident, Mike is the former Chair of the 39,000-member Sierra Club Angeles Chapter, which serves Los Angeles and Orange Counties. A long-time outings leader, Mike conducts about 20 outings each year, including some special ones to raise funds for the Angeles Chapter’s conservation work. These are wonderful tours that draw considerable interest. His most recent New England adventure is no exception.
Mike’s New England tour included historic sites in Massachusetts, such as Lexington and Concord with “the shot heard ‘round the world,” the Plymouth Colony and its replica Plimoth Plantation, a living history museum, and even Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond.
With the fall colors in full splendor, Mike took his group through Vermont to see a maple sugar farm, several traditional covered bridges, the stunning and historic Lake Champlain, a huge quarry of the famous Vermont granite, and the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream factory.
In New Hampshire’s White Mountains, Mike’s group rode the cog railway to the top of Mt. Washington, then walked along mountain streams in Franconia Notch and Crawford Notch.
Mike described the foliage colors as, “so intense that the reflections on the water in the streams make them look yellow, orange and red.” They visited even more covered bridges, then moved on to Maine. The tour concluded with visits to several historic seaside lighthouses and to Acadia National Park and even more fall colors.
Mike has led many other trips equally as fascinating as the New England tour he will cover in this program. Destinations have included the Pacific Northwest, the Black Hills of South Dakota and New Mexico, where he took his group to historic Santa Fe, Bandelier National Monument, Chaco Canyon and the Albuquerque hot air Balloon Fiesta. Be sure to ask Mike about his future trips. If they are anything like his past trips, they will be well worth looking into.
