Wednesday 14 May 2013

We headed North today to discover New Hampshire. Easy roads and no traffic...perfect! Stopped at a small town as I saw a scrapbooking shop as we were driving by! And it was open. Found a few things I was looking for while the salesgirl was telling Rob all the places we should visit, one of which was Chutters. This shop is in the Guinness Book of Records for the longest candy (lolly) counter of 111 feet and 11 inches. What a place! I reckon it was the biggest candy store I have ever seen! I don't have a sweet tooth but I couldn't walk out empty handed!
We then headed for the Flume Gorge, a stunning natural geographical feature. This flume is a narrow river gorge, 230 metres long and the granite walls are 20 metres high. It was a 2 mile loop through beautiful terrain, but it certainly tested our stamina as it was very up and down!
We then headed to the Mount Washington Hotel. Oh my gosh! What a place!!! I took a photo of a painting of the hotel as the whole front is shrouded with scaffolding as it is having a new roof put on.
This hotel was built in 1900 for $9 million. It was built for the rich who would come here for the summer to get away from the heat. It has 27 holes of golf, an equestrian centre, indoor and outdoor pools and even had a bowling alley in the old days. As it was built on the granite that was in the ground with steel poles drilled and cemented into the granite as the support structure,the foyer has never needed remodeling. No cracks or movement anywhere! Giant ceilings and huge rooms. They added a convention centre and the outdoor pool several years ago for $68 million. Dinner was excellent, I had rainbow trout on wild rice, topped with blue crab and spinach while Rob had a huge serving of fish and chips. We finished with red velvet cheesecake. (Glad we walked today)
It rained late this afternoon and the temp dropped from 7C to 0C in two hours, but with the wind chill factor is was -9C... Glad we were in for the night.