Hidden Leaves

Keene Friend and I at Elm City Yesterday

As I wrote on Friday, my wife and I were scheduled to head north for our annual leap peeping tour, kidnapping the Keene Friend while enroute. We started the weekend early when my wife showed up unexpectedly at First Friday. I’m so glad she did because I’ve got to “suffer” through the next few without her whilst she’s down in Panama. She rangered her way through yesterday despite having some sort of sinus cold. This has been a weird autumn so far. The colors should be peaking around now, especially north but it seems to me only some types of trees are doing so while others remain green. That analysis exhausts my botanical expertise but there were some beautiful vistas yesterday.

Wife Snapped this During First Friday

After we acquired Keene Friend we followed Route 12A north along the Connecticut River. We found what I described above, some spots of spectacular colors and others with very little. In other years we’d find whole hillsides sporting fabulous colors but only some of the trees on each hillside was in compliance this year, even as we got fairly north. I still enjoyed the drive immensely though. I’ve got his weird penchant for seeking out places I’ve never been before and this annual trip is part and parcel of that.

I learned yesterday that Keene Friend also enjoys this seemingly pointless adventuring. We had a lively conversation going when my wife remained awake. Before I realized it we were driving through the middle of Hanover which was overrun with Dartmouth alumni attending a football game, I assumed. My wife’s shopping instincts immediately kicked in but there was no way I was going to spend an afternoon trying to chase her down through the Ivy League hordes. I subsequently discovered there isn’t a lot of civilization north of Hanover but there were some of the best views of the entire trip as we followed Route 10 north. 

New Hampshire’s White Mountains towered to our right and tumbled down to the Connecticut River and rose again to our left as Vermont’s Green Mountains. They looked pretty much the same so wehre tdid the color appellations come from? We got to know the thriving metropoli of Lyme and Orford, New Hampshire. Orford is apparently one of the many towns in New Hampshire that claims to be the mythical Peyton Place and has some geographic features similar enough to the book to qualify and even sports a Peyton Place restaurant. I investigated later and found that there is no exact location as Peyton Place was a construct of several towns.

We made the turn back south in Orford, crossing the river to Vermont for the trip south. On our trip south I finally got see what White River Junction, Vermont looked like after passing by many times. I wasn’t that impressed. We returned more quickly to Keene since some rain started inserting itself into the process. We returned in time for some shopping and my wife achieved a remarkable physical recovery. She dumped Keene Friend and I off at the Elm City Brewery and headed for shopping parts unknown. Keene Friend and I tried to make the most of the situation. The Colony Mill building is in the midst of being converted into condos instead of stores but the brewery was still holding forth.

Unfortunately our preferred bar keep was not on duty and her absence was keenly felt. We ambled downtown and set up shop in Scores with its overabundance of TV screens. I think the place has changed ownership because many of the screens were tuned to the same event despite the opportunity the many college football games offered. We somehow survived this failure, assisted by the brewer’s art. We tried to rally some additional friends but Keene Friend 2 was battling a cold and the Cantankerous One was lost in North Carolina somewhere. We gave him a pass.

Margarita's

My wife eventually emerged from her shopping expedition and joined us for our typical Margarita’s dinner. We ended the night back at Keene Friend’s house where we reviewed my wife’s purchases while trying to follow some of the sporting events still ongoing. I woke up around 1130pm having missed a lot of the evening’s events. A long drive through the New England countryside and beering my way through one of my wife’s shopping expeditions will do that to me. I’m still going to miss her, a lot, starting tomorrow when I drop her off at the airport.

Meanwhile Dodging Sprinklers in New Jersey

The Bad Cinema project count remains at  #25 out of 100, no movies on the road.