Labor Day Weekend

It was a pretty good weekend.

Saturday I went to Portsmouth, NH. It's on the coast and located across the river from Maine. I had a nice drive over there. Instead of taking the major interstate north, I took a highway that kinda runs along the coast, through all the towns. I'm not sure where I was, but I made a U-turn to go to a store called Artichokes. Sadly, not a KT gift in sight. The whole store wasn't devoted to that wonderful veggie. Instead, it had a ton of kitchen stuff, gourmet seasonings and dips, and wine.

I wasn't sure where I was going in Portsmouth, so I just followed the signs for the old downtown and for Strawberry Banke. I parked at a meter and walked around. Saw the old city hall, tons of old houses that are open for tours, shops, restaurants, and a lot of people wondering around. I was tempted to eat lunch at a Blue Mermaid restaurant, but it was next to a loud construction site. According to the tourist guide I got in my attempted lunch stop (The Friendly Toast), it is one of the favorite restaurants in town. I couldda had me some cajun food! Instead, I was looking at a menu of nothing I wanted to eat and I was very aware of my 2hr time limit running out on the meter. Despite the fun atmosphere, I walked out and had some NY-style pizza across the street. It was next to an eatery that reminded me of Golden Harvest in Arcata. The pizza place reminded me of Smug's (of Arcata/Eureka) and so I had some mushroom pizza. It was pretty good and b/of the larger seating area than expected, I got to sit down to eat.

After a little window shopping on my way back to the car, I moved it to the Strawberry Banke area. My first attempt was a sad, little parking lot for a waaay larger park. There were about 5 spaces to use and about the same amount for the handicapped placard people. I ended up down a side street that looked like it went to the docks. I halfway illegally parked my car (the sign with the arrow for non-parking was about the middle of my hood) and walked around a flower garden. It was pretty to stroll in but there was no seating free. I think that there was only one bench per car squished on the street behind the park area. I crossed the street and went into an old cemetary. Appearently, it was so old that some of the markers were worn down to little nubs. The owner of the land offered up an acre to the city for burial purposes. He said that they have to take care of the land and that he'd only fix the fence if it was broken due to his livestock. Well, the fence wore down over the years, no one fixed it, and the livestock had free reign. The oldest tombstone marker is only 1658 b/of this reason.

I circled the park again and then looked at my visitor map to see how to get to I-95 (cuz all I knew was that it was further west than where I was at). I found my way but then decided to walk the Strawberry Banke Museum across the way. I was a strange rock garden with an old rusty anchor and official signs. I followed the trail to a ticket booth. I didn't want to pay the $15 admission, so I left. The map of the museum appeared to be really spread out to different streets and I realized it was the place I was reading about in my AAA TourBook.

"Strawberry Banke Museum is bounded by Marcy, Court, Washington, and Hancock
sts. The 10-acre historic waterfront neighborhood offers more than 45 buildings
from the period 1695-1955, in various stages of restoration and adaptation."

I didn't want to drive back home the same way I'd came, so I took 95S into Mass. and then cut over and came up to Nashua from the south. I felt proud that I figured my way around by myself. I'm starting to learn my orientation a little better... Oh, yeah, and Luke had his own fun up at Uncle Allen's lake house with the family. Nice area, nice family, but I just wanted to go exploring that day.

Sunday, I woke up from a dream where I was eating pancakes at IHOP. yum! Where else do you go when you want pancakes but the International House thereof? All I had was a stack of pancakes and I ate every few bites with a different yummy syrup. Maple, strawberry, boysenberry!, and whatever else. Is there such a thing as apple syrup? Anyway, the boysenberry is my fav-or-ite and I woke up with an absolute dire craving for pancakes. Unfortunately, there aren't any IHOPs nearby. There is a former IHOP building on Main St, which is probably where I got the idea, but, sadly, there is none. Luke and I went to Bickford's instead, but those pancakes were like eating sludge. They just couldn't live up to the dream.

It was a beautiful day and I wanted to go do something outside. The sun was out and it wasn't humid nor hot. At the door of Bickford's was a wall of tourist flyers. We ended up going to America's Stonehenge in Salem, NH. Interesting, but I didn't quite get it all. It was a maze of Native American stuff and then some ruins of a former home/cave series of this one family. People must have been way smaller back in the day b/ I'd be hard pressed to sit in those "tents" comfortably. Well, somewhere along the line archeologists discovered the perfect placement of things that coincided with the calendar and celestial events and locations. The solstices, equinoxes, and a rock that pointed directly at the north star. I think I would have understood more of it had we watched the 10 min informational video in the visitor's center, but neither of us wanted to. We just walked the trail in the woods.

Monday, I spent most of my day shopping. I had gotten up early to go for a walk b/, again, it was beautiful and not hot. In fact, I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt all day! After I called Target back to confirm my orientation for Tuesday, I decided that my time would be better spent looking for clothes to fullfill my uniform reqs. I now have two new pairs of khaki-ish colored pants. One of them is even a corderoy! Am I being fashionable or outdated? Anyway, the Clothing Gods gave me the one victory at JC Penney's and so I couldn't find any red shirts. Looked a lot of places, but b/of the Labor Day sales, not much in stock in the right size for me. The reds varied from a bright christmas tree red to a brick red. There were sparkles and beads and 3/4 sleeves, but none that fit or looked right. There were even leftover 4th of July shirts but I can't have anything with a logo. I didn't shop in Target b/ I intend to do so after my orientation tonight. Might as well save the spending for the employee discount, no? Luke reminded me of a Kohl's on the other side of the freeway. I'm going to try there today, but I don't know what task will be harder.... finding the right street and freeway exit, or finding a red shirt. hmmm. We shall see soon.