Day 43 of 62

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Coming out of Bangor we got on Route 2 and followed it westward into New Hampshire. A nice small road winding through tiny towns again, and the mountain view ahead of us beckoning. The White Mountains region was beautiful and striking even without the Old Man. All due thanks to our friend “woowoo” for the encouragement to check out this area before leaving! Sun and rain competed throughout the day, and during dry moments we did a bit of sightseeing.

While driving we finished the last of the audio CD set “Don’t Know Much About History” which we got at the Barnes and Noble which shielded us from the intense rain in Baltimore. I learned a few things and confirmed/untangled quite a bit more in my memory, but the CDs were so much less than they could have been. For instance, they used a Q&A format but the answers often didn’t explicitly answer the question. For instance “What was the Missouri Compromise?” was followed by several minutes of discussion about states entering the United States after the Civil War, how population was counted, and who could vote, but never included a sentence “so the Missouri Compromise was …”. The author also began with a promise to show the more human side of history or something like that, but after the hilarious example quotation from George Washington the rest of it was right out of an eleventh-grade history book.

We stopped at the beautiful Silver Cascade and walked up to the base of the falls. The pool was irresistible (“literally”!) and soon one of us was skinny-dipping while the other stood lookout. Unfortunately some strangers arrived and cut short the cold but fabulous dip. We’ll have to find some place to swim tomorrow, even if it requires bathing suits.

Silver Cascade

Next we hiked along a short trail which followed a river winding its way through the granite, most of it a smooth oval channel that left us begging for some body armor in which we could ride all the way down, luge-style. The forest was extremely tall here, a mix of pines and maples I think, and the trees shielded us from most of the rain or sun above. The highlight of the trail is “The Basin”, a deep round pool in this granite waterway.

Big Bowl o'Water

It was great to be back in nature for a few hours and to have rushing, crystal clear water instead of the slow brown currents of so many “inland” rivers we’ve seen.

Settled in Ashland, NH for the night.

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