Today we gathered up our stuff and left Maine, albeit with some regret. Our journey today took us out of Maine going west into New Hampshire. New Hampshire is another state we have never seen before and the drive there took us through some more really scenic country to our next destination, Sandy Beach Resort in Contoocook. We have no idea who or what a “Contoocook” might be other than a funny-sounding word.
On our way to the campground from I-89, we noticed some very healthy looking wild turkeys lurking in a hayfield of a place called Breakwind Farm. No kidding. Our Garmin then directed us a little bit further up the road and instructed us to turn right over a listing, closed covered wooden bridge with a maximum overhead clearance of 9′-9″, substantially less than required for our 12′-10″ high Barbarian Invader by Forest River. Phone service with our lousy Sprint provider was not available according to the number of bars on the display but we were able to contact the campground with it anyway and given a detour which promptly got us to our destination. We pulled into Sandy Beach, which really does not have much of a sandy beach, and found we had been assigned a campsite which was graded in such a way that setting up our Invader level would have been almost impossible. Peg hopped out and walked back to the office where they stated that we could take any available site we wanted so we moved into G-16 and set up for a 5 day stay. Despite our initial difficulties, we found the campground to be quite pleasant with full hook-ups, nice interior roads, cable TV but crummy wi-fi. Campsites are located quite a ways apart from each other in a large stand of mixed conifer and hardwood mature timber.
We very possibly would not have come to this place at all if it had not been for my aunt’s 90th birthday celebration scheduled by her relatives for July 11 in Elkins, NH, about 25 miles up the road from our campground. Her birthday is actually September 13 but nobody seemed to notice. I think they chose this weekend because all possible participants could arrange to be here in the summer more easily than in September after the kids go back to school. We got the Barbarian Invader all squared away and re-boarded Charlotte to head to Elkins. I have only seen my aunt and one (or maybe more) of her offspring once previously – Elly the aunt (and maybe some others who my defective memory has disregarded) in San Diego in about 1985 and Kathy my cousin in San Francisco in about 1983.
There were a bunch of relatives either already here or soon to arrive. In addition to Elly, all four of her kids (Kathy, Barbara, Walt and Amy) were at the party venue along with their spouses, children, children of children and assorted other cronies. These folks, much to our delight, love to party. They serve excellent food of many varieties and they attach no stigma to drinking. What a great crowd. Were we ever glad we were fortunate enough to be invited to this four day event which provides not only great food and drink but also ample opportunity to hob-nob with folks we wish we had been introduced to much sooner in life.