1) Thanks to awesome local guide Mark, I got to see the Kancamagus Highway from the passenger seat of a schweet 'Vette today. It was a great road (and, having lived only a handful of miles from The Dragon, I'm not easily impressed); I'd love to fling the Zed Drei down it someday. I had fun navigatoring from the passenger seat. The scale of the map was hard to figure at first, since up here in the Northeast, you can't swing a cat without it entering into interstate commerce.
2) While one end of the Appalachians looks pretty much like the other, New Hamster is oversupplied with postcard-perfect lakes, and the little towns are almost painfully twee.
3) It is snowing. But just enough to impress us tourists.
4) You don't get many trick-or-treaters in Hell-and-Gone R.F.D. The wild turkeys jogging across the road did not ask for candy, but did look moderately annoyed at being made to hustle by traffic.
Back a few decades ago, a bunch of hill folks set up on the K-Way and faked accidents to make folks stop and offer help.
ReplyDeleteA attractive young blond lady in basic black and pearls would be standing by the half open door of a Caddy, with a well dressed gent hanging out from the door.
When the nice people stopped, the local folks (including the shotgun man in the trunk) killed everyone in the car, taking only the money on their persons, and hauled the cars, money, and unused credit cards of to a shallow grave in the woods. The lookout up on the cliffside let them know when a car was approaching that had no other vehicles within several minutes of it.
This went on for quite some time, until the cops put together a probable locale, and began running unmarked cars through the area.
It all came down hard one afternoon when a convertible with a guy and apparent girl cruised by and stopped to help. The shootout was supposedly one of the wildest since Frank Hamer ran down Bonny and Clyde, and resulted in the deaths of all the badguys (and badgirls).
The slender young "girl", replete with scarf and (I've heard) lipstick, was a young policeman named Massad Ayoob.
Considering where you are house sitting, I'm surpirsed that Mr. Stanford didn't come down in a sheet and whisper "boo". He's an old trickster from way back.
ReplyDeleteHe used to own a lumberyard at the end of that street (right on the corner of Rte 4); he'd sometimes super-glue a quarter to the floor just to torment youngun's. Good family to know, though.
If you get a chance, head on over to Cornish and get some of the local flavor of J.D. and Augustus. It's not too far away.
Enjoy your stay. It's always a "beautiful time of year" in the Granite State.
I've been meaning to get out to the Dragon and see how the new Mustang handles it.
ReplyDeleteAlas, the Kank in summer is over-run with tourists in mini-vans and Winnebagos, so getting a nice ride on it (motorcycle-wise, that is) is difficult.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, it is a wonderful road and one of those motorcycle "must do"s you should really check off before checking out.
Ed,
ReplyDeleteThe part with Mas sounds a mite sea-storyish, since I'm pretty sure he's never shot anybody in the line of duty. But, yeah, if somebody wanted to bushwhack tourists, that'd be a road to do it on; you're hell-and-gone from anywhere out there.
Ross,
Yesterday was perfect. A couple weeks after peak season and I think the Pats were playing, et voila! we had the road darned near to ourselves.
So, New Hampshire. Not that far from Vermont, and the Trapp Family Lodge,
ReplyDeletehttp://www.trappfamily.com/
-- Sound of Music, the traveling Von Trapp Family Singers, et al.
Enjoy!
Yeah, the "hills have eyes" story is a tall tale for the tourists. As I recall, Mas Ayoob was on the Concord PD and the Lebanon or Grantham PD, a bit removed from the jurisdictions covering the Kanc.
ReplyDeleteThe real Halloween stories are up the road from where the Kanc dumps out in Albany. A POS recently released from Maine state prison killed the clerk and a couple of customers at the Army/Navy store in Conway. Further up the road at the Dana Place Inn, the owners were stabbed to death and set afire by their daughter and her drifter boyfriend.
Just so you have the warm and fuzzies, a couple in the town where you're staying was murdered by a couple of misunderstood vermont yoots about 10 years back.
NH; now with psychos just like Texas, without any added accent :)
"NH; now with psychos just like Texas, without any added accent :)"
ReplyDelete:D
No, y'all talk plenty funny up here. ;)
What's the most interesting thing about the place is how familiar it is, from the scenery to the people. I've spent most of my life on the other end of the same mountains and, if you changed the license plates on the cars, it'd be hard to tell if you were in the back hollers of TN or NH without checking folks' garages for snowthrowers.
You have never lived until you drive "The Kank" in a full on blizzard. One minute you are shopping in yuppie heaven N. Conway, the next you are trying to get over the pass in white out conditions. Such is Thanksgiving in the North Country.
ReplyDeleteTry Rt.9 just west of Marlboro and West Brattleboro, coming down off Hogback mountain with nothing but a parking brake after the hydralics chose to blow. Whiteout conditions with sudden black blobs appearing, couldn't even see the fenchposts, had to steer by the crown in the road.
ReplyDeleteHandled it pretty well at the time, but thinking about it now scares the bejeezuz out of me.
A long 6 or 7 minutes.