Bewitched – 6 October 2011

Today was a beautiful day for a drive around the coast. Our campsite was at Salisbury, a fairly uninspiring coastal development (this made it all the more surprising that it had such an excellent restaurant!), but across a bridge is the township of Newburyport. This has many large impressive 18th century houses, once the homes of wealthy shipowners.

We continued following the coastal road around the peninsular to Rockport.. This proved to be our favourite place of the whole trip. Once a fishing port, it is now predominantly an artists colony. The small town was delightful to walk around, many picturesque old buildings, including former fisherman's cottages, are now selling gifts, artworks and pottery. The harbour with it's boats and old fishing-shack, provides seating to relax and watch the sun playing on the water.

South from here we were planning to stop at Gloucester, but it is so much bigger, and less appealing, we carried on. The coast had many lovely settlements, with fine old houses, which took us all the way to Salem.

As we have all heard of Salem, but were not too clear on the actual details, it was interesting to visit. The museums all sounded a little OTT, but in fact we enjoyed our visit to the Witch Dungeon Museum. Details of the history surrounding the Salem witch episode is narrated and acted out, using excerpts from the original court transcripts.

There is a curious irony that Salem is only a tourist stop these days because of false stories about witchcraft and yet the modern town is making its money off ghosts, ghouls tarot, psychic readings and so forth and thus is still trading on false stories about witchcraft.

Maine coast – 5 October 2011

The day finally dawned with blue skies and a promise of sunshine. We had designated today as the birthday celebration as we are not all going to be together on the actual day so the celebrations began with another all-American diner breakfast in Old Orchard.

Once completely sated we set off down the coast to Salisbury, MA, passing through Maine and New Hampshire again. Highlights were Kennebunkport, a real tourist trap full of bus tour parties and York, the oldest colonial settlement in the area.

Kennebunkport has a real cute village feel, with lots of restaurants and shops selling artworks as well as souvenirs. There are many fine houses in the surrounding villages, and according to the guide book, George Bush along with many other Republicans, holiday there.

Lunch was overlooking York Beach, then we drove through York Harbour and on to York, which was the oldest permanent English settlement on the coast. As a result, there are still a cluster of fine old buildings in the centre. The York Gaol is the oldest colonial building still on its original site in the US. We enjoyed looking around, until the rain clouds that had been pursuing us all day, finally caught up with us.

Tonight was the designated 'birthday' as Murray's actual 60th birthday is not until Monday, when we will be back in the UK. Today was chosen, as the dinner venue sounded the best choice of the trip. We hurried to our campsite, as we had booked a window table early, at 5.30pm, to be able to enjoy sunset over the Atlantic.

The Seaglass Restaurant had excellent reviews on the Web, and we would heartily endorse them. Having a window table is a must, as the Atlantic breakers crash below the building in a most spectacular fashion. We discovered they actually floodlit the sea at night, so the view continued during the dinner.

Bradley, Alan and Janine shouted us the meal as a joint 60th treat, and we enjoyed the best meal of our trip. The best entree was probably scallops with risotto, best main tied between fillet mignon and pork steak stuffed with cranberries and walnuts. All deserts were equally good. The children presented us with a unique book designed mainly by Alan and Janine, highlighting selected significant events of every year since 1951.

Happy Fall – 4 October 2011

As the reserved campsite for the night was well way from any significant towns and we were not confident that the propane situation was any different to yesterday we rang ahead to establish if there was “emergency” accommodation we could move to if required; there was not. The campground owner helpfully suggested a motel in the largest town we would pass through, so we secured two rooms. After a delicious dinner at the Black Horse Tavern we retraced our steps a few miles to the motel.

After discussion with the proprietor he upgraded us to the suite for one of the rooms as it it was a two-room unit and certain members of the party had complained about certain other members' nocturnal audio the previous night. The owner said that they did not typically rent the suite at this time of the year or for a single night but he took pity on our plight and accommodated us in both senses of the word.

All was well until 5 a.m. when with a quiet rumble the vast majority of the softboard tile ceiling fell on top of Janine and Alan who were sleeping in the lounge. Fortunately such ceiling tiles are fairly light and no damage was done. The emotional trauma and psychological scarring will take many years of expensive therapy to heal!

The proprietor was, naturally, mortified when he saw the damage and opened another room for them to get a little more sleep.
As we pulled away from the motel, we were struck by the irony of the sign on the church across the street, “Happy Fall”.

We had yet another RV repair rendezvous to make so after stopping for another American Diner breakfast we drove through the rain all the way to the next campsite at Old Orchard on the Maine coast.

The RV repairman arrived a few minutes after us and could not find any propane leak. But his trip was not wasted as the rear slider unit which makes the internal space significantly larger when parked decided to fail. He made some makeshift repairs to enable its continued use and we concluded that the final task the previous repairman had undertaken had actually resolved the propane problem. There has not been any recurrence of the alarm or propane smell since so, hopefully, all is well.

Finally, some colour – 3 October 2011

Our weather gamble paid off and the morning revealed patches of blue sky so we had an early start and retraced our path back to Fracona to ride the aerial tramway (otherwise know and a cable car gondola) to the top. Although we were there in time for the second trip of the morning we were still a bit late as the mountain mist rolled in as we rode the “tramway” to the top. It was chilly at the top and the mist did not appear to want to move away so we rode down again and, once below the cloud base, enjoyed stunning views of the valley in a wonderful range of autumn hues.

Once down we set of back to Conway via the Kancamagus Highway, one of the most scenic routes in the area. The sun was out, the sky was blue, the colours stunning and the drive amazing. However, we could not linger as we had to meet a deadline to get the propane leak in the RV checked.

While Murray took the RV for the check which, ultimately, was inconclusive the rest of the party rode the Conway Valley Scenic Railroad, an historic steam train and dining cars etc. We enjoyed their lunch excursion.

White Mountains – 2 October 2011

We presume that the White Mountains are not named that because of the low white mist hanging over them but it was certainly an accurate descriptor today as we motored up from Conway to Bretton Woods and around to Fracona Notch State Park. The incessant rain made any view further than the immediate side of the road impossible to see and most viewpoints and rest-areas were driven straight by as there was nothing to see in any direction.

We pulled off at the State Park to check on the conditions at the Cannon Aerial Tramway but there was no possibility we would see anything so decided to gamble on a better day tomorrow and drove on down to North Woodstock.

The campground there was pretty uninviting so after we secured our site and checked it out in the daylight we motored back into the Woodstock Inn and Brewery which is built in a relocated railway station and settled ourselves in for a game of Carcasonne while the rain did its thing outside.

The party is complete – 1 October 2011

Today's mission was to rendezvous with Janine at Conway where her 5 hour bus ride from Boston (after 35 hours flying/transiting from Auckland) was to deliver her. En route we called in at an RV yard to have our RV checked for a propane leak.

The reason was that last night the alarm sounded three times and the smell they tag propane with was was very strong. The RV guy confirmed that there was a leak but could not locate it with the quick checks he could perform.

We reported this to the hire firm and they arranged for a service-man to visit us at our next campground. He arrived and checked all internal and external places and could not find a leak. We drove into town, had dinner, returned to camp and the propane alarm sounded almost as soon as we had set up. Totally frustrated, we located a hotel room and moved in.

Lake Winnipesaukee – 30 September 2011

The day started with a breakfast trip to a typical American Diner. The Farmers Diner car was an original semi-Worcester Streamliner from 1946. Many of the fittings inside were also original.

After an impossibly huge meal of pancakes etc, we set off to visit the Cornish-Windsor Bridge, the longest wooden bridge in the States and the second longest two-span covered bridge in the world. Today the water was brown from the earlier floods, but appeared to be running at not much more than a normal level. A bystander said that during the hurricane floods, the water level was right up to the bridge.

We travelled on to Hanover where the road passed through the heart of the campus of Dartmouth University, the place where BASIC was invented, and sat at a pedestrian crossing while students poured past in both directions. It seemed as though we would need to wait until lectures finished for the day before we could proceed legally so we simply edged through the milling student throng and hoped the State Troopers were not watching. From there our route to Meredith touched on the most southern part of the White Mountains; here the red colours were pretty solid on the mountainsides.

Meredith is built on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee, and was a great little town to wander around. We discovered a mill race built by John Swasey in 1816. The source of the water was Lake Waukewan, at the north end of town.