I've managed to upload a few pictures
May 23, 2011
Melinda hosted an awesome dinner at Mistral last night! Melinda’s graduation gift to Jilly was letting Jilly decide on the wines for her graduation dinner. She did a great job! There were about 15 of us, all friends of Jilly or Melinda and all of us had some connection to the new graduate. Randy and I got to meet a lot of really nice people, and Jilly got to see the people who mean a lot to her. After, we adjourned to the Union Club for some quiet talk. A wonderful evening of good food, great wine, excellent conversation. I wish the evening had been longer!
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| Fire! |
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| Loading |
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| Master bedchamber in Salem Towne's house |
Because I am a guide, I am very sensitive to guides and how they do their jobs. Our guide, “Mary,” was extremely knowledgeable about some things and woefully uninformed about others. She waxed rhapsodic about cheese making for an interminable 10 minutes and probably could have, right then and there, produced a wonderful cheddar if she’d had the makings, but she couldn’t answer the question, “Who made this chest” about a piece of furniture that was the only one in the hallway. But she did teach me that a “bedchamber” is always upstairs and a “bedroom” is always downstairs. Nowadays, if you have a guest, you might tell them to take the “second bedroom” and they wouldn’t know exactly where to go. In 1825, if you told them to take the “second bedroom” they would at least know that it was on the bottom floor. The “first bedchamber,” on the other hand, would be on the second floor.
It started raining—AGAIN—so we left Sturbridge and drove north to Lincoln, NH.
Other than losing our reservation (moral: ALWAYS keep your confirmations!), the InnSeasons Pollard Brook Resort in Lincoln is very nice. What is not nice is that our unit is on the third floor—THIRD!—floor and there are no elevators! I’m sure climbing to the third floor is God’s punishment for our bringing so many things with us.
There is so much stuff to do in Lincoln that we tried to extend our timeshare here for another week, but according to Interval International (our exchange company) there isn’t a timeshare to be had for the rest of the summer in all of New England. I find that hard to believe, but nevertheless that’s what they say. We’ll have to make the best of our time here.
So we spent the week doing really touristy stuff: looking for moose. So far I have seen one and a half moose and no mooselets. The half moose was the back half of a moose disappearing into the trees. There are supposed to be more moose than people up here but you can’t convince me of that!
OK, OK, we’ve done a lot of other stuff, too. The humidity has been close to unbearable but at least it’s not raining. At least not much right here. The TV the previous night (May 26th) had had dire warnings about possible tornadoes and torrential rains in the mid- and eastern areas of Vermont. No mention of New Hampshire, but it WAS a Vermont station and the weather maps seemed to ended at the border of VT. They were right, at least about the torrential rains.
On the 27th we decided to drive to Montpelier VT and visit the Cabot Creamery along the way. US2 was completely closed and the state routes we took to get to Montpelier were barely open. The rain had caused dramatic problems with streets and driveways, many of which looked as if they would take days to fix enough for people to just get out of their driveways. The Cabot Creamery was open but not actively making cheese as they had had no power until the middle of the night. When we finally got to Montpelier, many restaurants and shops were closed to business but their doors were open to get the flood waters from the Winooski River out of the stores and basements. All the roads were a mess. One of the “Road Work Ahead” signs had covered up the “Ahead” and put “Everywhere” in its place.
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| Our guide, Liz, and Saint-Gaudens' bas relief of Col. Shaw |
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| Augustus Saint-Gaudens home, Aspet |
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| One of the hundreds of flowers in bloom |
Saint-Gaudens' home is in Cornish, NH, was built in 1800 and extensively remodeled by him and his wife. It and the grounds are, as you might suspect, stunning. He called it “Aspet,” and summered there from 1885 to 1900 and lived full-time there after that until his death in 1907. During his life the grounds included (but do no longer, unfortunately) a swimming pool, bowling green(!), and nine-hole golf course. Throughout his working life he collaborated with many landscape designers and leading architects, including his friend, Stanford White, to enhance his sculptures with equally beautiful and unique settings for them. We took several tours while we were at the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site including his home as it was in 1900 and tour of his art that graces the grounds.
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| Beautiful birch alley at Aspet |
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| Another of his bas reliefs and pool |
We’ve spent a lot of time touring New Hampshire looking for covered bridges. They are really big on covered bridges in NH! There are whole maps devoted to covered bridges. Some are drivable, some are walkable, and some are so fragile that we could only look at them. They come in many different designs and suspensions and really are quite beautiful. More so when it’s sunny, of course, but we take what we can get!
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