The worst weather in the world

 Since we were in Lincoln, NH, a mere 70 miles from Mt. Washington, if the weather cooperated, we HAD to drive to the summit. With Randy’s interest in things meteorological, how could we not go there?

The morning the weather looked promising—not fabulous, but definitely promising—off we went. At 6288 feet, the “mountain” in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains is the highest in the Northeast. I’m not at all sure who “owns” the road, but it cost us (and anybody who drives up the mountain) $33—$25 for the driver and car and plus $8 for each passenger. We did get a CD (our car CD has broken and we can neither play nor remove any CDs), a bumper-sticker saying, “This car climbed Mt. Washington,” and explicit directions on how to drive the mountain road. They gave pretty good advice on mountain driving and it appears that most people obey the rules. We, of course, needed no instructions on mountain driving.

Driving up (and down) was pretty much like any mountain road I have ever driven and as we got closer to the top, the weather improved tremendously. So much so that we could see for miles and miles, not as far as they promise on a really clear day—the Atlantic Ocean to Québec but certainly to Maine and Vermont. We had stopped and bought our lunch at a marvelous deli in the White Mountains, called, naturally, the White Mountain Deli, so we found a convenient table and ate with the entire panorama surrounding us. After, we wandered around the area for a while, saw the old hotel which had bunk beds and communal dining, clambered over some rocks to take each other’s picture next to the Mt. Washington elevation sign. We had to go down eventually—the sign says we must start down by 5:45pm.

Oh, yes, the title of this episode: The worst weather in the world. Not my claim, but Mt. Washington’s owners seem to be inordinately proud of their terrible weather. Highest wind ever recorded on earth (!), 231mph. High temperatures are not their big thing as the highest ever recorded on top of MW was 72° and none of their thermometers have any number bigger than 72. But low temperatures are another thing they are proud of: average annual temperature is below freezing; they get an average of 15 feet of snow every year; they have awful pictures of all the building totally covered in ice and snow (the buildings aren’t even recognizable as buildings). They put their slogan, “The world’s worst weather” on all the snowplows that are discretely scattered by the side of the mountain road.

Driving home several things occurred to me: Why are the motels advertising that they have phones? (When I see that and some of the rundown motels, I start humming the theme to Deliverance.) The tourist bureau says this is the time to see moose; where are they the rest of the year?

Heading to Lincoln NH

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!

Fire!

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On May 23^rd we headed for Lincoln, NH, via Old Sturbridge Village, yet another really old American village, but perhaps the gold standard for those villages. We watched a musket demonstration that showed us why the soldiers preferred to have paper packets of gunpowder rather than just the loose powder. Reloading takes 14 seconds with the paper packets vs 40 seconds for the loose powder (he had one of the visitors time it).

Master bedchamber in Salem Towne's house

We toured the Salem Towne House—yes that is a confusing name! We thought it was the city hall for Salem; it isn’t, it is the home that Mr. Salem Towne and his family lived in—to see how people lived in the 19^th century. This house is perhaps my favorite of all the houses we have looked at and toured while we’ve been back here in New England.

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 26^th) 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 27^th 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.

Our guide, Liz, and Saint-Gaudens' bas relief of Col. Shaw

Saturday, the 28^th, our last full day in Lincoln, we planned a visit to the home of a sculptor I had never heard of before, Augustus Saint-Gaudens. You may recognize his work if you’ve seen a $20 gold piece: he designed the “Standing Liberty” that graces that coin. He also did, among many, many others, a huge sculpture of General William T. Sherman of Civil War infamy and another of Colonel Shaw who lead the first all black regiment into battle in the Civil War (and died in that battle).

Augustus Saint-Gaudens home, Aspet

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.

Beautiful birch alley at Aspet

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!

Boston and Hannah Dustin

May 21, 2011

The Haymarket, the ultimate in farmers' markets!

We were in Boston (henceforth, BOS—I find it so much easier to use the airline abbreviations for the various cities!) for three days. Well, “in BOS” is a teeny tiny exaggeration: we were actually in Revere, MA. For reasons that escape me completely at this point, I chose a Marriott in Revere. Revere is about 10 miles north of BOS but it is actually in a whole ‘nother universe. It’s on a divided highway that does not have exits and entrances but rather escapes and I-dare-you-to-try-and-enter-this-highway-in-front-of-me openings in the BOS-driver traffic. To go south you have to go north.

Paul Revere in front of the Old North Church

The lunch crowd in front of Faneul Hall

Anyway, the weather has cooperated more or less and we had a wonderful dinner well south of Revere in Attleboro, MA. The dinner was wonderful, traveling with Randy in the Friday rush hour traffic from Revere (have I mentioned that we stayed in Revere?) south THROUGH BOS in Friday afternoon traffic to Attleboro was not fun. Anyway, dinner with Jilly—the Graduate, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa!—was awesome. Really nice to see some relatives we haven’t seen for a while and especially nice to do it while eating the most awesome tenderloin I have ever had. Yes, the most awesome tenderloin ever.

Independence was announced here!

Benjamin Franklin

Saturday we bagged the graduation (sorry, Jilly!) and took the T (Metropolitan Transit Authority). We got a Charlie Card—yes, thanks to the Kingston Trio’s “Charlie on the MTA” (and yes, I know I said the Limelighters, but I’ve learned it was more the Kingston Trio) the transit cards are called Charlie Cards—and headed for the city even though the weather wasn’t the greatest. But it turned out to be a fabulous day: warm, sunny, beautiful! We walked the Freedom Trail, wandered through many burying grounds (otherwise known as cemeteries in the rest of the world), had a lunch next to Faneul Hall. It was cool to have the BOS free WiFi and be able to send a picture to Kathy of Randy having a beer at McCormick & Schmick’s; she and Ken ate at the same place about 15 years ago! How cool is that?!

I ran out of energy and enthusiasm at about 11,000 steps on the Freedom Trail so we went back to the hotel and later had a totally unmemorable dinner. 

May 22, 2011

Hannah and her great-great-great-great-great-great-grand-daughter

Today was not as beautiful a day but right now any day that isn’t raining is a good day! We went on a driving tour of some of the towns north of BOS, notably Haverhill (everything here is pronounced weirdly: Haverhill is HAY-ver-ill) because I wanted to find the statue of Hannah Dustin.

Hannah Dustin (or Duston)

WHO? Hannah Dustin (or Duston) was a woman in colonial America who, along with her maid and infant Martha (who was less than a week old) were captured by Indians. Somewhere along the way she killed her captors (who had killed her baby, probably really pissing her off) and scalped them. She brought the scalps back to her town as proof of the attack to warn the inhabitants thus becoming a heroine to the entire town. There are several statues of her in New England, one even shows her with the scalps. I care because I have always been told that I am related to her and my cousin Daniel has done the research showing that she is my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother—I think I counted all those generations correctly! So that was really cool to see her statue. I have a beautiful handprinted book (it’s huge, about 18” by 24”) with four different authors’ versions of the Hannah Dustin Story. Not having the book in front of me, I can only remember that Cotton Mather was one of the writers. I think Ralph Waldo Emerson was another. Emerson would make sense, as Hannah's maiden name was Emerson.

Once I had satisfied myself about Hannah we set off to see other things and, of course, find a great place for lunch! Lunch was fabulous at Joseph’s Trattoria Bakery and Café. They even had fresh pasta and sauces and bread to bring home for dinner. Nevermind that we were staying at a hotel, our room had a refrigerator so we bought our dinner for the NEXT night, in Lincoln, NH!

I don’t think I mentioned that Randy lost his camera somewhere north of DC. We bought him a new one at a Costco and he almost lost THAT one when he left it on the hood of the car. I just can’t take him anywhere!

Off we went to Salem to visit the witches. Other than having a hard time finding our way around, even with the GPS, Salem was sort of a bust. Lots of witchy stuff, lots of schlocky stuff, and the House of the Seven Gables. Now I’m going to read the book since I’ve seen the house. Maybe it’s free on Kindle?