I’ve been to Latvia and Peru and Turkey and Iceland and Kenya and a dozen or so other places, but there is a lot of the United States I have never seen, even here in New England. My old/new friend Judy offered me the use of her New Hampshire chalet for a summer holiday. B (who did most of these photos) clears his schedule, and we are off for a four-day weekend of chilling out. To make the most of our abbreviated vacation, we leave after work on Wednesday evening, at nearly 8:00pm. There’s a reason that I mention the late hour.
It is foggy and rainy and dark and about half-way there an insect gets into the car who makes not one but several meals of my flesh, leaving me with silver-dollar-sized welts on my arm, behind my ear and where my thigh meets my hip. This is just a hint of what NH’s Mosquito Nation has in mind for me.
Once we drive through Conway and North Conway, home of the outlet malls, we try to follow Judy’s directions, but in the wet dark we cannot discern a street from a driveway. We are lost. At 11:20 we despair of finding it and I pull out my cellphone to wake poor Judy up. She guides us to the door of the house by telephone with groggy good will.
The house combines almost total tree-encased privacy with the convenience of being two blocks from the main road. Only the muted sound of traffic reminds us that other people exist. The downstairs has a couple of good-sized bedrooms and the one giant room upstairs includes the kitchen, a substantial island, a mini-office, a living room with a working fireplace and a puzzle corner with a 1000 piece puzzle in the making on a designated table. I happily inhale the scent of sweet burned wood. Everything spells comfort – from wifi to cable tv to the turntable and records to the cutest toaster ever.
Thursday
We have breakfast at “Yesterday’s” in nearby Jackson Center. A glance in the windows of a real estate office reveal some affordable real estate for anyone with a steady job, a lack of voracious creditors and an incomprehensible desire to get into the present real estate market.
We drive into North Conway and spend a retro hour in a legendary local store: an old-fashioned head/sex-toy shop called Headlines. The area is famous for outlet malls, so we drive over to join the (modest) crowds at one of those, but we fail to find the charm or the bargains. Luckily, on the way home we stop by an agreeable dollar store and pick up some of my favorite scrubby-sponges and $1 sensitive toothpaste. My retail jones is quieted for the day.
The first thing I notice as we toot about is that almost everyone in the area – both locals and visitors – is white. It reminds me of the Home Counties in England where, once you are south of the boundaries of the ethnic mix of London, you encounter an almost scary degree of homogeneity. I always felt like I was wearing a big iridescent tattoo on my forehead: JEW! I can only imagine how exposed people of color feel in such surroundings. But, as B reminds me, this is New England of the USA.
A big hunk of visitors are the ubiquitous bikers – most of them of a certain age. I recently read that the Harley-Davidson company is worried about who will buy their goods when the boomers stop riding. From what we see all weekend, that’s not happening soon. I notice two (assumedly unrelated) things about the bikers: at least half the women now ride their own wheels and a high proportion of the riders are fat. Restaurants, bars and motels in the area all display their “Bikers Welcome” shingle.
Friday
It pours from morning to night so we stay in. I spend a couple of hours of “practical” time, watching a mediocre exercise video put out by So You Think You Can Dance, which I am reviewing for an arts and entertainment portal. And I’m reading short stories by Tobias Wolff, whose first novel Old School recently blew me away.
The house is embraced from every direction by evergreens and birch trees. Standing on, the expansive deck, watching the rain, I figure the view must be pretty fabulous in winter, too.
I cook dinner for us and notice that the classy pots and pans are newish. Judy will tell me later that their only break-in resulted in the theft of all their pots and pans, plus the paper towel dispenser. This is so puzzling that I wonder if there isn’t a short story hidden in there somewhere.
Saturday
Sunny Saturday is our only remaining opportunity to be tourists. Annoyingly, after all the rain, just walking from the door to the car nets me about a dozen swelling, itching mosquito bites. I’m a living magnet, always have been. To a freaky degree, despite dousing myself with bug spray. Although I lavish myself with the stinky poison, as the day passes, the bugs prove to be utterly undeterred.
We are adopting everyone’s suggestion and driving the 34.5 miles of the Kancamagus Scenic Byway, through the White Mountains National Park. We know there are plenty of picnic possibilities along The Kanc, as insiders call it, so we stop at a convenience shop called Lil Store on the Kanc (see photo above) for what turns out to be fresh, fab sandwiches, sweet cole slaw and rich potato salad. It is run by a couple of boomers who have had to change gears. His construction work dried up right before the store became available. They invested sweat equity and stock it with whatever passers-by need – from sunglasses (a biker wanted some after his had been blown off) to instant cameras to ice cream and to her home-made food.
We enter The Kanc at Conway on the eastern end, heading towards Lincoln to the west. Along the way, we are impressed with how well this national park is organized. A $3 day-pass for the car allows us to pull off at any of the organized sites, from the swift river to mountain trails to scenic overviews. We stop at a number of very sweet spots along the way, including a private nook along the river with big flat rocks on which to rest our asses as we eat our lunch (see photo left). We climb along the famous Sabbaday Waterfalls (see photo below) and catch the views from both sides of the mountains. I grew up in mountains and nearby forests, so I find this landscape comforting.
I am amazed at how little traffic there is on the Kanc, although a number of the road-side parking lots for official trails and recreation centers are filled with SUVs and swarming with nuclear families.
It is only on our return that I look for the source of the name. According to Wikipedia, “The highway is named after Kancamagus ("The Fearless One"), who ruled as the third and final Sagamon of the Panacook Confederacy (sometimes spelled Penacook) of Native American tribes in what is now southern New Hampshire.[1] In 1691, due to fighting with English settlers, he made the decision to move north into upper New Hampshire and what is now Quebec, Canada.”
When we’re done going up and coming back down and arrive at the far point, Lincoln, we have to decide whether to retrace our return or go by an alternative route that looks longer. We decide to return via The Kanc so that we can make additional stops, but just as we’re making a circle in Lincoln to turn us around, I spy a thrift shop in a parade of stores.
It is massive, it is air-conditioned and it is Christian. Not only can we pick up items for modest sums, we can take a free bible. What could be more enticing? In fact, a certain fuzzy off-white jacket (new, I believe) that is 100% cotton and of a texture somewhere between terry cloth and chenille is going for $9. That’s four dollars more than I usually budget for any such purchase, but, hell, I’m on vacation. I toss my money down on the counter as if I were a person who knew where to get more. I turn down the bible.
Sunday
It’s over. We must clean away all evidence of having been here, switch off the water and head home. When we stop for gas, I ask some locals where to eat and they send us off to a Mall eatery that turns out to do some mean French-fried sweet potatoes. Our stomachs have plenty of time to settle, though, because we spend most of the evening stuck in immobile traffic. Nothing says “Kiss your sweet break bye-bye” like a traffic stand-still on a mall-lined artery.
Recent Comments