Yarn run

I picked up a bunch of pamphlets for local attractions, and lo and behold, the main store for Patternworks is just 60 miles up the road from Manchester in Center Harbor! I've received yarn catalogs from them for years, and had to make the trip. Heather and I drove up through some of the most beautiful countryside during the trip, and then we came to the lake. Lake Winnipesaukee is a huge lake in the center of New Hampshire, with lots of fingers spreading every direction. Center Harbor is just one of many small New England towns along its shore, with quaint old homes, a beautiful old church and little cemetery right between the road and the shoreline.
There is a ferry-type ship that does tours on the lake. I got a picture, but we didn't have time to take the trip. Maybe next time!

We spent over an hour in the yarn shop, it was great! I found yarn and a pattern book to make my son an argyle scarf, some great variegated cotton yarn for me a sweater, of course some more sock yarn, and a couple odds and ends. We wandered up and down route 25, because it follows the lake for miles. I swear, it could have come right out of a Rockwell painting, I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming.

It finally rained today, it's been so warm and clear for the past week, I can't complain. New Hampshire had been 2 weeks without a storm, they were starting to have brush fires. It's hard for me to be concerned, since it hasn't rained at home since the end of March, but 2 weeks for them is a long time.

Tomorrow we are driving to Hampton Beach, which is on the Atlantic ocean, so there will be more pictures! It's supposed to rain, but we want to eat fresh New England seafood and see the Atlantic, so the weather won't stop us. We are having such a good time, I can almost forget that soon I'll be leaving here without my kids. I can't think about that very much, it will be really hard. Mom and I went to church with Heather today, and people were very friendly. It's nice to know she will have a church family here, even if I can't be close, there are people that will look out for my kids.

American Stonehenge

Wednesday we went to America's Stonehenge, which is about 20 miles from Manchester in Salem NH. It was really cool! It is about a 20 acre site that is on top of a hill, covered with trees. Archeologists have decided the stone buildings there were built about 4000 years ago, but have been used off and on since then, right up to the colonial period when a family settled there and built a house, but used the existing structures for storage. Thank goodness they didn't destroy the main buildings!

The whole area is surrounded by rock walls, which not only surround the site but also interesect, like rock walls between rectangular fields. The stone used is granite, with huge stone slabs for roofs on several of the structures. I'll post some pictures tomorrow, I don't have my camera with me. We hiked all around the place for a couple hours, but it's easy walking, the hill isn't very steep, so I could even walk it pretty easily. The same family has owned the property for many years, and have done a good job preserving the site, while they live next to it. They have alpacas there also, I wanted to take one home!

Mom made it to Manchester today, and now we've taken her motorhome to another mechanic to check her brakes; the transmission mechanic fixed a leaking brake line and told her she needed them checked, but he didn't handle brakes. So, another few days at the shop, it looks like. We took it to a truck/bus/rv shop in Weare, NH, which is about 20 miles north west of Manchester. They could take it today, and hopefully fix it on Monday, the other places I called couldn't even look at it until Thursday, and I want to be on the road again by then.

For some reason, Mom doesn't want to walk up and down the 3 stories to the kids apartment, so we got a hotel for the weekend, which allows me to have internet. I made it up and down those stairs several times a day for the past 5 days, and boy, I'm glad to have a bed and an elevator! Heather signed up for internet today, but we haven't had a good connection for the past several days at their apartment, so I'm taking advantage of the good connection here.

Tomorrow we are driving to Center Harbor, NH, where Patternworks has a yarn shop. I've received their catalog for years, and when I realized they were 60 miles away, well, I have to go to the yarn store, and who knows? I may buy some yarn, cuz I can never have too much! I'm working on a summer sweater now, a short sleeve one made with a ribbon-type yarn, I just about have the back done now.

If it's Sunday this must be New Hampshire

What a week! We have crossed 14 states in the past week, and lost my Mom in Scranton PA. Well, we know where she is, but she's not with us in NH. We pulled into Scranton Saturday evening, I was driving the motorhome. Just after I came off the highway toward our hotel, the front of the motorhome started smoking. At first I thought it was the car in front of us, but then I realized it was us! I couldn't tell where the smoke was coming from, and we were within a mile of the hotel, but I got a powerful feeling that I had to pull over immediately. I found an empty parking lot and drove off the road and up as far as I could, by then the vehicle was smoking really bad. Mom said "take your purses, in case this thing starts on fire" We jumped out of the cab, the whole front smoking like crazy, and saw fluid pouring onto the ground. It was the transmission, and we aren't sure if it was because we had the car dolly on and were pulling up and down a lot of hills coming into Scranton, or the transmission was problematic before. There was some whining in the motorhome even before we left Cottonwood, but I'm sure dragging a dolly didn't help.

Mom found a tow truck, and amazingly they were just a mile or two away. I called Uhaul, and a young man came down, hooked up the dolly and took it back to their lot. Everyone has been so nice there, it was a great relief. Mom insisted that we go on, and since we had to get the other trailer back by Tuesday, we really had no choice but to keep going. David plans to check on her tomorrow when he leaves here. Most people would get a little panicky, but not Mom. I wanted to stay with her, and she said "What are you going to do here, hold my hand?! I'll be fine, I'll rent a car and get to know Scranton for the next few days." She plans to drive over here when the motorhome is fixed, and spend at least a few days here before we start our trek back across the country.

David and Nic are only here one full day, and they spent most of the day helping put together furniture and unpack. They are superheroes, I think. They are planning to drive cross-country in 4 days, and since there are two of them to trade off driving, they may make it sooner. I wish they could go sightseeing with us for a couple days, but they both have to get back to work. This is the busiest time of year for Best by Farr, and Nic doesn't have much vacation time, so they have to get back.

I haven't uploaded any photos yet, I'll try to do that tomorrow. It's really pretty here, so many trees and so green! For a desert rat like me, it's a little surreal, I keep looking for the sprinklers and irrigation systems, but I think they just rely on rain to have such nice lawns and greenery. Manchester has over 100,000 in the city, and 250,000 in the immediate area.

Cruisin' through Memphis

Well, we are rolling along. We stayed in Albuquerque on Tuesday night, and it was 7% humidity. Tonight in West Memphis it's 51%. It was a smooth drive, and the trailers are riding very well, despite the weight!

By the time we reached Oklahoma City Wednesday evening, a storm was brewing. Luckily for us, we were able to 'ride the high'; there was a high pressure system between two storms, and we stayed right in the middle. Behind us, Oklahoma City had tornadoes, in front of us it was raining all the way to the coast. Whew!

Arkansas has so many rivers! And, it seems they are all flooding right now. In eastern Arkansas all the rivers we passed are flooding, and I'm so grateful that the highway was built high enough not to flood. We didn't see any houses being flooded, seems they have enough sense not to build on the flood plain, unlike some developers in the Maricopa valley. The fields are being planted, and the trees and flowers are blooming, it's really pretty.

We will cross the Mississippi river tomorrow morning, and right through Memphis. We won't get to stop this time. We were here about 12 years ago, and got to spend a day in Memphis. No, we didn't get to Graceland, darn it, but we went to Beale Street and it was pretty grimy, actually. The rest of Memphis was pretty nifty though. There was a really cool island right in the Mississippi river that had a scale model of the River from beginning to end. It was a big concrete model that showed all the states, and the Mississippi running through them. We spent a couple hours there, I was fascinating, the kids ran all over it, and jumped back and forth across the running water, saying "Hey, I just jumped the Mississippi!" OK, maybe that was actually me jumping across...

Gettin' ready to Go

Heather and Jared have all the stuff they need for the next month in the house, since everything else they own is in boxes in the garage. With 4 dogs and all the kids here, it's impossible to keep things cleaned up much. Oh well, I'm not a neat-freak so it's not a big deal. It's sure been great to have the kids here, and we had Dakota twice this week, all day Sunday and a couple hours last night. She is growing up so fast!

My friend Julie Hutchins Greer stayed over last night too, she is on the way to the Grand Canyon today. She painted a mural in one of the buildings there, and she has a painting in a gallery show there now. It's a national thing, the Parks dept. has a collection that is showing at National parks around the country, and the kick-off is at the Grand Canyon this weekend. Cool, huh!

I've been working on my watering system for the past week, hoping to keep everything alive while I'm gone. David fixed the automatic system pipes that broke last winter with the freezing weather we had, so that's taken care of. Now I'm setting up soaker hoses and an automatic timer on all my backyard plants that aren't on the electronic system.

I've set up reservations at Day's Inn across the country, so we'll have a decent place to stay on our trip. It will be quite a caravan, our big black truck hauling a big Uhaul trailer, Mom's motorhome hauling Heather's car, and Jared's car. So now we have 6 driver's for 3 vehicles, it should be a little easier to manage, with several drivers. Gas is going to cost a mint!!! We're expecting close to $4 a gallon, ouch! I'm pretty excited about the trip though, we're going through Tennessee from Memphis to Kingston, which is in the northeast corner. Then up the Applachian mountains on highway 81 into Pennsylvania. I'll post picture as we go along, I hope, we're supposed to have internet access. I can't believe we leave next week!