Like many things in the region, New Hampshire was named after a place in England, the county of Hampshire. The first European settlement was a group of English fishermen near Portsmouth, three years after the pilgrims landed at Plymouth. It was kind of a tricky place to live as the frontier between the British and French colonies, plus Algonquin Indian claims in the central and north, and then throw in a bunch of border disputes with Massachusetts in the south. It also had a thriving slave trade, as it did not impose a tariff on slaves, just as nowadays it does not impose a sales tax. Or a capital gains tax!
New Hampshire isn’t the most interesting state, but it does have the White Mountain National Forest, as well as the tallest mountain in New England, Mount Washington. And while it’s not the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi, it’s the most geographically prominent. It would be too late in the season for me to hike it, it’s not supposed to be overly difficult, but it has the most deaths out of any mountain in the US! Which is pretty crazy, part of it is the sheer number of people that do it, and I guess it can get quite dangerous if the weather turns, and most people come pretty unprepared, thinking it’s just an easy walk up. So anyway, the White Mountains was on my to-do list.
photo stolen from wikipedia
I stayed in the largest city in New Hampshire, Manchester, which has a population a bit over 100,000 people. It’s got a small casino and card room there, as well as a bigger room 20 miles down the highway. The reason the other room is bigger is because it’s closer to the greater Boston area. Manchester also gets a lot of presidential candidates, as New Hampshire is the first in a series of presidential primaries. It’s more important for the amount of media it receives, not the actual primary itself. A few towns, like Dixville Notch open voting up at midnight, which is always covered by news crews and reporters.
The morning I would wake up early and drive to the White Mountains I stopped at the Red Arrow diner, which is a famous spot for candidates to stop in for a photo shoot. Every single seat has a little placard with famous politicians that sat there. Considering I was up at 6am and nobody else was there, I took Joe Biden’s spot, which was also Vivek Ramaswamy’s haha. Nothing like some eggs and hashbrowns smothered in cheese and chili with a cuppa Jo to start a long day.
So before this trip started I was thinking the White Mountains would be some of the best fall foliage on the trip, as it’s the most famous for leaf peeping. But I did not realize that this far north, and at higher elevations, I was wayyyy past peak. Oops. So I’d have to temper my expectations for getting any nice photos. But still it’d be a nice day of hiking and waterfalls. As I got further into the mountains it was apparent there was a good bit of snowfall last night, the first one of the season. Excellent! Instead of oranges and reds, I’d get white in the white mountains.
First stop was the Flume River Gorge, a hugely popular spot during peak foliage, with tickets and a time slotted reservation system at all. But I wouldn’t need a ticket this late in the season. I got there right around 9am when it opened, and much to my chagrin, a big sign saying closed for the season! Weak! Literally one day too late, aghh. But there would be lots more places on the list to stop by with only one full day in the park. I drove like ten more minutes and found some different trails to hike. Everything was looking very peaceful and hardly any other people around. A very nice morning to be doing some of the short waterfall hikes, albeit a bit slippery.
Kind of nice having these places all to myself
The smaller waterfalls were actually nicer to photograph
Once I got over to the eastern side of the park in the afternoon, it was like teleporting from winter back to autumn. All the traces of snow were gone, the trees still had leaves, there was still a bit of fall color around, so basically back to what it was like for the 98% of this trip. In this part of the park there’s more towns nearby and there’s a few covered bridges around, which are always a crowd pleaser. Actually my first covered bridges of the trip! Woo hoo. I get why people like them, they’re old, usually historically significant, kind of romantic, brings you back to a more quaint, simple time, etc. Personally I’m not going to go out of my way to see them, but if they’re right off the highway, sure!
Covered Bridge! I wish it was covered in snow though
The old railway line. Some guy’s unleashed St. Bernard came charging out of the grass, barking it’s head off, I honestly thought it was going to attack. Scary as hell. Leash your friggen dog if it’s gonna act like that to people walking by. And then of course he does the whole, ohh he’s so friendly, wouldn’t hurt a fly bit. GTFO.
This one is a functional, in-use, covered bridge, even more exciting!
One of the better waterfalls stops along the popular Kancamagus Highway.
The mountains don’t look especially pretty when the trees are all dead and there’s no snow on them, heh
So that was one big loop driving around the White Mountain Nat’l Forest. After that I headed over closer to the coast in Newburyport MA, which is right on the border of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, at the entrance of the Merrimac river. I also spent a few hours in Portsmouth NH, pictured here…
Bridge into Maine. I’m kind of annoyed I didn’t make enough time to get up to Portland, ME. Oh well, next time.
Downtown Portsmouth
And that was about all for the sightseeing on this trip. Poker ended up being pretty meh. I played in two crazy games in Manchester, where people were drinking and splashing money around, lots of all-in’s, people running up big stacks, and wouldn’t you know who ended up losing in those games? This guy. There goes all the profit for the trip. Extremely frustrating. Then the very last night I played a bigger 5/10 game in Springfield MA and lost $2,000, including the biggest pot of the trip, maybe $3,500 where I flopped a straight, and the guy goes all in with just a naked flush draw, gets there on the river, of course. Fun way to end the trip.
So in three weeks I lost $2,000 plus the maybe $4,000+ of expenses. So yeah, pretty massive failure of a poker road trip. I came back to Illinois the day of the election to cast my vote, I shoulda just stayed in Springfield. Of course just to add insult to injury I cashed out some BTC to bet on Kamala, because I really did not want to believe that this country could really elect this guy twice, but obviously banking on Americans to do the right thing is a complete suckers bet. Lol me.
Finishing with some Halloween photos from Salem.
I can’t wait for 2025.
