This was another family trip, in July of 2012. My friend, Esther-Marie who was born and raised in Boston, had many happy memories of summer vacations on Lake Winnipesaukee. She said that we MUST go there when we went to New Hampshire. I was able to rent a big house for a week, right on the lake. The kids were very excited about it, as were their parents and grandparents.
On the drive up from New Jersey, we stopped in Portsmouth to visit the famous Old North Church, a historic Congregational church located on Market Square. Daniel Webster was a prominent member of the church and President George Washington attended a service in 1789. The steeple is visible from most of the city, the Piscataqua River, and communities on its western bank in Maine. While the edifice is Italianate, it looks very New England to those of us from the West Coast.
Arriving to our vacation location in the evening, we were treated to a brilliant sunset. The streaky orange clouds above the lake, visible even through the trees, elicited “oohs” and “aahs” from all of us.
Bright and early the next morning, the kids were ready to jump into the lake. Grandpa helped with fastening Mackenzie’s life jacket while Terry got the kayaks into the water. At a nearby marina, we rented a large water trampoline and anchored it just off the dock of our house. The grandchildren’s ages for this trip were: Kieran, 16; Owen, 13; Quinn, 11; and Mackenzie, 8. Bouncing each other off the trampoline and into the water…. well, what could possibly be more fun than that? Kieran perfected back flips: he must have done 50 of them. The weather was sunny, and the water warm, just the way we hoped it would be.
One day Marnie, Owen, Quinn and I took a hike to the top of Mount Major. The 3.7-mile loop trail is entirely forested until the approach to the summit and quite rocky throughout. The first mile was flat, but later the trail became steep, especially at the top. This was not daunting at all to the boys, and I enjoyed watching them scamper up the trail. The views of the lake and the surrounding landscape from the summit were glorious.
Wolfeboro is a town of 6,200 on the eastern shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. We had rented a boat, which was the best way to get there from our house. Wolfeboro advertises that it is America’s first resort town, and we found it a charming little city. We had breakfast one morning at the Wolfeboro Diner and then took a walk around the neighborhoods and commercial area. Owen, who has always loved and played music, found a music store with many instruments he could peruse. On another trip to Wolfeboro, we all got ice cream cones from a truck, and they were yummy! From our boat, we were able to view many houses along the lakeshore, including one that looked like a castle and another that we called “the mansion” which was next door to our house.
Castle in the Clouds is a 16-room mansion and 5,300-acre mountaintop estate in Moultonborough that overlooks Lake Winnipesaukee and the Ossipee Mountains from a rocky outcropping on Lee Mountain, formerly known as “The Crow’s Nest.” Andy, Owen and I went there one day on a side-trip and saw a waterfall, a fountain, the mansion itself and beautifully landscaped gardens. The house is an example of Arts and Crafts architecture, expressing the aesthetic movement’s philosophy of living in harmony with nature. In a pond on the estate was a mother duck with her seven ducklings. We had a great time watching them follow their mom around, with their little webbed feet frantically paddling through the water. We loved this excursion but apparently it was there that I was bitten by a spider, although I didn’t realize it until the next day when we took another side trip.
Franconia Notch State Park is located in the heart of the White Mountain National Forest. One of the popular hikes is the Flume Trail, a 2-mile loop through the Flume Gorge, which consists of boardwalks, stairs, cascading water and a picturesque red covered bridge. The Flume was discovered in 1808 by a 93-year-old woman who accidentally came upon it while fishing. At the top of the Flume, we had a close-up view of 45-foot Avalanche Falls, which created a roaring sound as Flume Brook entered the Gorge. The kids loved exploring the caves and sparkling green pools along the beautifully maintained trail.
Our next stop was Old Man of the Mountain, which used to be a series of five granite cliff ledges that appeared to be the jagged profile of a human face. Unfortunately, it collapsed in 2003 so we couldn’t discern the facial features when we saw it. We took the Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway to the top of Cannon Mountain, a 4,000-foot peak in the White Mountains. The trip up and down was fun for all and the views from the top were excellent, as this was another clear day. Unfortunately, by this time I knew something was wrong with the inside of my forearm because it was very swollen, bright red, and sore to the touch. When we got back to Wolfboro, we went to a pharmacy where I asked the pharmacist what she would recommend. She said I needed to go to the emergency room immediately because one person had died from a brown spider bite earlier that summer. We drove to the hospital and, as is usually the case, had to wait a long time. When I finally saw a doctor, he said it was either infected or I was having a strong allergic reaction. He gave me both an antibiotic and steroid pills to take for the next several days and told me to seek further medical help if it didn’t get better soon. Fortunately, it began to improve the next day, so I knew I was “out of the woods,” so to speak.
The last night, we ate dinner at a restaurant aptly named “The Restaurant.” We celebrated what a wonderful week this had been and when we returned to the house we were blessed with another fabulous sunset.
We headed out the next morning to New Jersey. Marnie, Terry and the kids went directly there in their big car while Andy and I stopped in Concord on the way. We visited the New Hampshire Historical Society Museum and strolled through a farmer’s market across the street from the State House, which is the oldest state house in which the legislature still meets in the original chambers. On the grounds is an impressive bronze statue of George Perkins, a New Hampshire native who served in the US Navy during the Civil war, and a replica of the Liberty Bell, which looks exactly like the real thing. There was also a historical sign that described how, since 1920, New Hampshire has held its presidential primary election before any other state. Now, when primary time comes around and all the candidates are in New Hampshire, I have a better sense of this small state’s political importance. Once again, these trips have provided Andy and me with an education in American History far beyond what we had learned in school or college. Seeing places, buildings, statues, national parks, rivers, bridges, cemeteries in person brings history to life more vividly than reading about events in a book. And it’s so much fun to learn about our country this way.