Our days in New Hampshire are at an end for this trip. We got up this morning, ate some breakfast and then drove my sister Julie an hour down the road to Manchester where she got a flight out to Newark and on to LAX. We returned from the airport, hooked the Invader to Charlotte and took off going west. The first bit of the road was I-89 which is a good road with beautiful scenery on each side. Up by New London, NH, we left I-89 and struck out on Hwy 11 through the New Hampshire countryside.
Although Hwy 11 is predominately a good road, the route takes travelers through towns with amazingly circuitous courses around roundabouts that are actually square, up skinny roads and through overtaxed signals that back up traffic for blocks. Fortunately, this is a pretty scenic part of the country and looking out the windows as you putt along at 30 miles per hour or while stopped is pleasant. It does take a long time to get anywhere because speed limits are ridiculously low and roundabouts fool the Garmin, possibly due to changes made to roads unknown to entities that do mapping.
We ultimately emerged in Springfield, Vermont, where we took some very strange turns up quite steep residential streets before arriving at a delightful campground called Tree Farm. It has a dirt entry road that may fool some but should not deter those who want to stay in a great place. Elizabeth and Ben, the campground operators, met us at the office and answered every question we put to them before taking me on a ride around the place to show me the way into my site. The site is nestled in a mature grove of conifers with a few hardwoods, gorgeous flowers, blooming hostas, full hook-ups, CATV and good wi-fi. The campground is not affiliated with any of the big campground groups like TT or Encore but they are hooked up with Good Sam which ended up giving us a nightly rate of $30, dirt cheap compared with anything in Maine.
Peg and I had both entered a withdrawal period from lack of Chinese food on this trip so we asked our hosts about the availability of Chinese food in this locale. They directed us back into town to a place called Shanghai Garden which is located in an ugly little diner building but which has great Chinese food. My cashew chicken was very tasty and delivered along with an egg roll, fried rice, pineapple chunks after dinner along with the usual fortune cookie for less than $9. Peg got something called General Gau chicken which she also received with all the trimmings and she stated it was also really good. We also got an appetizer called Crab Dragoons which were very tasty. Altogether, the bill was around $25 which we thought was very inexpensive. The only drawback to the place was the staff may be recent immigrants from China and have pronounced accents such that Crab Dragoons are clab dlagoos and one of the waitstaff only grinned and grunted as her form of communication. Regardless of the communication flaw, we received exactly what we ordered, it was delivered very quickly, it was quite tasty and we left very satisfied.
We returned to our Invader and promptly fell asleep. It was a big day with lots of driving and good food at the end.