New Hampshire

2024-07-08
NH

Due to some medical issues, the longer trip through Nova Scotia was scrapped for this year. Because it's a road trip, we were pretty much able to get back almost all of hotel money by cancelling. And luckily we were able to make use of the three nights at the Franconia Inn in Franconia Notch, NH. This is a lovely inn with about 30 rooms. It has both a sledding a tubing hill for the winter, although that's mostly grazing for horses right now. The biggest season is the fall of course.

We actually decided to make a longer day of it and stop at a couple lighthouses on the Maine coast on the way up. Firs we stopped at Nubble Lighthouse / Sohier Park, which is at the towns of York Beach and Cape Nedick. The towns look like "beach towns," which are the same whether you're in Maine, Delaware, or Colorado. A family-oriented tourist destination, if you will. Plenty of t-shirt and sweet shops to go with the crowds. The lighthouse itself sits on a rocky outcropping just off the coast so you can't walk up to it. While there is a boathouse so the keeper can come to shore when they wish (weather permitting), it also has a basket trolley to transport things from the mainland. Apparently one keeper sent his kids to school in that trolley.

We also stopped at the Stonewall Kitchen factory and store for a few minutes of shopping. We noticed it on the way to the lighthouse and so we backtracked a couple miles. They had a lot of jars of jelly and stuff. I haven't tried my jelly yet.

Next we headed up to Portland to see the Portland Head Light and Fort Williams. Portland has grown to a sizable city. Perhaps not as big as the Portland on the west coast, but still pretty big. It took some time to work our way through the city to the light house, only to find it shrouded in fog.

Portland is known for its fog so this shouldn't have been much of a surprise, but we hadn't considered it. We walked down and around the lighthouse, and by the time we did that the fog had rolled out a ways. Good luck for us. I've heard that this is one of the most photographed lighthouses in the world, and by the number of people there I would believe it.