Dateline August 12, 2017, New Hampshire and Maine
Golf with Maurica. We pulled out of Connie and Lee's in the morning and drove over to the Amherst Country Club to meet our friend Maurica Smith for a round of golf. Maurica grew up at our home club in Florida, Riviera, one of Donnie Klem's star pupils, and she took the morning off to play with us. What fun. She hits the ball over two hundred and seventy-five yards off the tee; the Klemphonics clearly work.
She has been at Amherst four years now and has found she likes the management side of the golf business better than teaching or playing as a pro. We had a wonderful round and a great lunch with her before setting off for Franconia Notch State Park, a mountain pass in the White Mountains between the Kinsman and Franconia ranges. It was a beautiful drive up, and we checked into the Fransted Family Campground in Franconia, which gave us a lovely private spot back in the trees. The rain caught up with us, so there was no cooking out; we made do with a sandwich and a restful evening.
The Flume. The sun was slow coming up the next morning, and we spent it touring Franconia Notch, ending at the Flume. The Flume is a natural gorge that runs some eight hundred feet at the base of Mount Liberty, its walls of Conway granite rising seventy to ninety feet and standing only twelve to twenty feet apart. We paid at the visitor center, rode the bus to the base, and climbed the stairs and boardwalk up through it, close enough to see the flowers, ferns, and mosses growing on the rock. After the heavy rains, the water was running beautifully.
The Flume was found in 1808 by a ninety-three-year-old, "Aunt" Jess Guernsey, who stumbled on it while out fishing and had a hard time getting her family to believe her. In those days a huge egg-shaped boulder hung wedged between the walls, ten feet high and twelve long, until a great rainstorm in June of 1883 set off a landslide that carried it off. It has never been found, and the same storm deepened the gorge and made Avalanche Falls. The walls themselves are Conway granite, laid down as molten rock in Jurassic times; thin veins of softer basalt later pushed up through the cracks, and over the ages those veins wore away faster than the granite around them, leaving the gorge you walk through today. The work is still going on. It was a wonderful walk, good exercise on top of all the beauty.
The Mount Washington Hotel. In the morning we drove the thirty miles or so to play golf at the Mount Washington Hotel. We had played here years ago with Janice's brother Brian; since then the Omni chain has taken over the hotel and course and given both a thorough renovation.
One piece of real history happened here in 1944. Delegates from forty-four nations met at the hotel that July to set the rules for the world's money after the war, and out of it came the International Monetary Fund and what became the World Bank. The system of fixed exchange rates they built held for the better part of thirty years, until President Nixon ended the dollar's tie to gold in 1971.
The course, with those views, was a joy to play, and we had a great morning of it. Then we packed up the clubs and fixed some lunch, taking in the sight of the grand old hotel up on the hill.
Cousin Brian. We had missed Janice's cousin Brian Otis back at Bill and Margaret's on the Cape, so the plan was to spend the night at his place in Intervale. What a house it is, designed by a San Francisco architect and built by a local man, and written up in Architectural Digest when it was new. Brian has since expanded the deck and taken out the built-in beds. It sits in the middle of the national forest, so it feels tucked away and private, but it is warm and full of light.
We had a wonderful dinner of steak and chicken with Brian and his lady, Donna Cormier, along with two-year-old Sky, a rescue puppy who guards the place from the occasional bear, barking until it wanders off. The talk, of course, was all about family, and it was a delight to finally meet Donna and get to know her; she has run eighteen marathons, so she is more than a match for Brian. In the morning, after a fine night with the two of them, we ran into town to have a few things seen to on the Roadtrek at Camping World in Conway. We have always said an RV is like a boat: every time you take it out, something needs fixing. They sorted the water pump and a few small things for under three hundred dollars, and anything under a thousand we count a home run. Two hours later we were on our way to Maine.
Maine. We stopped at the Maine information center and came away with maps, brochures, and good advice. We wanted the back roads and a place to land for the night, which was Belfast, so we could see the Blue Hill Peninsula in the morning, and they steered us toward Deer Isle and Stonington, the largest lobster port in the state. We left Belfast around half past eight and headed for Castine, founded in 1613, before the Pilgrims ever reached Plymouth. There was said to be a nine-hole course over a hundred years old, which sounded like fun, but when we got there it was a cow pasture. Castine is home to the Maine Maritime Academy, a four-year engineering college, as well it should be, since it sits on the deepest harbor in the state. It is a quiet, beautiful town. With no golf to be had, we pushed on to Deer Isle, a pretty drive, and to Stonington a few miles farther, with its lovely harbor.
We fixed some lunch and made our way back to the highway and on to our reservation at the Sunset Point Campground. We wondered where we were headed as we drove in, but it turned out a fine spot, each site with its own picnic table under a little shelter.
The best part came when we asked the gentleman who runs the park where we might find the local fish market for some lobster. He simply asked how big, and live or cooked. He fixed them himself and brought them to us at six o'clock, two two-pounders, cooked, delivered right to the campsite for twenty-seven dollars. Life does not get much better than that. In the morning we would cross the border into Canada, hoping for good weather ahead.
