Polar Caves Park- New Hampshire September 2021

 We stopped by the LEGENDARY cave attraction "Polar Caves" in New Hampshire!  This was GREAT!  Don't be fooled though, this isn't for cowards!  You crawl, climb, get stuck, etc, etc in their 9 caves that are, at times, a bit of a tight squeeze!  If you have done the slow one hour walk through a show cave....  well, this is very different.  Its much more of a wild cave experience.

Lyme New Hampshire September 2021

Lyme New Hampshire!  This is why you go to New England!  "nuff said.

Lucky's Coffee Garage Lebanon NH 09 2021

 I wanted to give a quick mention to Lucky's Coffee Garage, easily my favorite coffee shop in New Hampshire!  This independent coffee shop has a lot of heart, its cute, and they have good coffee!  We were very lucky to have stumbled across it!

Franklin Pierce in New Hampshire September 2021

In September, while driving around New Hampshire, we stopped at several sites associated with President Franklin Pierce....  In my opinion, one of the most underappreciated Presidents.

Concord New Hampshire State House September 2021

 In September, we stopped by the New Hampshire State House in Concord!  They had announced that they would not be doing tours at this time, but the kind volunteers there still hooked us up!  Here is a video I posted to youtube.  There is a lot to see here, including a fabulous Civil War painting by an unknown artist, and battle flags!

Concord New Hampshire September 2021

 We had a great road trip swinging through New Hampshire and Vermont recently!  Here is a video I posted to youtube about the great New Hampshire City of Concord!

"Ten years on the rock pile" and Instant Legends from the rock pile" by Lee Vincent

 We planned a trip to Vermont and New Hampshire recently.  Before a trip like this, I enjoy reading books about the area we are going to visit.  

ALSO, there are those places you want to visit, but, because of time budgeting, or the way the road trip plays out, you realize that you are going to have to save certain sites for another day.

So, I found myself reading the classic regional volumes "Instant Legends from the rock pile" and "Ten years on the rock pile" by Lee Vincent.  Both books about a state I would be visiting.  Both books about a site that I would not get to visit.

We really wanted to make it to Mt. Washington.....  it is legendary, but, because of our desire to see certain other places, we realized we would have to save Mt. Washington for another day.

Still, I tracked down these quick reads recently.  I first heard about Lee Vincent and his work in the OTHER legendary volume "Passing Strange" by Joseph A. Citro.  Citro gets into some of the ghostly and strange happenings in New England.  Lee Vincent's two books aren't supernatural focused, but he does mention an unseen force on the mountain.

Most of his stories are just fun essays on living on a massively tall mountain that can be cold, windy and isolated.

I was thrilled to find copies of these books, pretty much independently published in the 70s.

Saint Gaudens National Historic Site- Cornish, New Hampshire

The Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site is in New Hampshire, right across the Connecticut River from where we were staying in Vermont.

Sites managed by the National Park service are a bit scare in Vermont and New Hampshire, so we wanted to visit here... well, since it is a National Historic Site.

AND, because Saint-Gaudens is one of those people that you know about, but you kind of don't realize it.  As we visited, I realized that I had seen several of his works of art here and there in our travels.


Anyway, Augustus Saint-Gaudens lived and worked here from the 1880s until his death in 1907.  You can tour his home here (though none of his art is in the home).  We enjoyed our house tour but we really enjoyed walking around the gardens and seeing all of the amazing sculptures. 

One work that truly impressed me was a piece recently installed this year at the site called "Standing Lincoln."

You know I love Lincoln, and seeing great works of art inspired by him.  This particular casting was made using mold pieces restored from a copy made in 1966!  The VERY friendly park rangers here gave me a book about their copy of the 12 foot statue explaining how it was made and how they got it.  When Augustus was creating his original, he used a local man who was the same size as Lincoln for a model.

This was one of those parks we visited thinking that it would be nice and pleasant, but we left really impressed.  We ended up staying here longer than we anticipated, and we would definitely go back if we were in this neck of the woods.

Skinny Pancake in Vermont and New Hampshire

When we flew in to the airport at Burlington, we noticed a very cozy looking restaurant area called the Skinny Pancake.  It looked interesting.
As we explored Vermont, we realized that there were a few Skinny Pancakes here and there.  We ended up visiting the one in neighboring Hanover New Hampshire as we visited Dartmouth.

WE LOVE SKINNY PANCAKE!  This is one of those small chains that I would love to se explode.  I like how they are doing everything.  The restaurant itself is clean and cozy, and the food is perfect.  The crepe was amazing, and I don't know what they do to their bacon, but it was the best.  I had a Panini here that was great too!

A very fun and friendly person took our order, and a manager came by during our meal to ask how things were going, and to ask if they could get anything else for us.

Dartmouth College, New Hampshire

While in Vermont, we realized we were VERY CLOSE to the Ivy League college known as Dartmouth!  We drove around campus a bit, and we enjoyed this little town where it is located.  It is very scenic.  Here are a few photos I took!

Haunted New England books by Robert Cahill

Hey, I just thought I would give a brief mention to the wonderful series of books by the late Robert Cahill.  I know the first couple of times driving through Salem, it seemed like his books were everywhere!  I stocked up!

If you enjoy authentic ghost stories, tales of unsolved mysteries, and general New England strangeness, Cahill had a well put together, easy to read book for ya!

Plus, he had deep, real roots in Salem.  I wish I could have crossed paths with this author.  Luckily, he was a prolific writer, and we can read his stories.

"Passing Strange" by Joseph A. Citro

I have mentioned before how, sometimes you read a book, and a subject or author comes up.  Maybe something odd is mentioned, and I make a note of it... and it leads to researching another topic or place.

Well, the book, "Passing Strange" by Joseph A. Citro kept popping up as I read other books and material relating to New England.

So I picked up a copy.

The book actually covers some of the lesser known ghost stories, legends and hoaxes.  There were many in here I had never heard of.

Some (The Eddy Brothers) are given more credit than they deserve, but this is still a nice collection of strange tales.

Others are interesting and I need to look up more info on them (The Black Flash of Provincetown, and several mysterious "triangle" areas).  There is the legend of a house that burned to the ground, but still occasionally appears in photos!

New England is such an established area, and there are so many strange legends.  This book by Joseph A. Citro is a good starting point for reading about the strange in that region!

The New England Grimpendium by JW Ocker

I picked this one up right after Halloween, otherwise I would have mentioned this book in October.  AND, I am on a New England kick right now.

I wanted to read this book because, outside of Kentucky, New England is one of my favorite areas.  My love of Salem in general is well documented on this site, along with several other areas up north.

Also, I love "macabre and ghastly sites".

Maybe "love" is too strong of a word.  "Enjoy a whole heck of a lot" might be more accurate.  At the end of the day, I must admit that I have an appreciation of weirdness in general, especially when I travel.

JW Ocker's "The New England Grimpendium" is a great travel guide noting some of the darker sites one might visit in New England.

I have actually visited a couple of sites listed, but there were MANY more listed that I had no knowledge of before. 

In fact, as far as odd travel type books go, this is one of the more original volumes out there.  I also feel comfortable saying that this is the best dark tourism book I have read in some time.

Ocker's writing style is detailed but fun.  He gives you the facts, some history, and most importantly, details about how to get to the places he mentions.  BUT, he keeps a humorous style going throughout the Grimpendium.  Concerning his entries on Nathaniel Hawthorne he mentions, "it's not stalking if you trace a man's life after he's dead." 

Comments like that are common.

Something else I like about this book is that Ocker generally avoids the dime-a-dozen "haunted" locations that fill the pages of many other travel books with skulls on the cover.  In fact, he only really brings such sites up if there is something else a bit more substantial going on at the location.

JW Ocker's attention to sites with something truly interesting to offer was one of the main reasons that I enjoyed this book so much.  There is a reason he mentions each memorial, museum or other site of interest in his book and thankfully those reasons do not involve the siting of orbs.  JW has done actual legitimate research on this book and the sites mentioned.

Also, there is a great section on filming locations (involving mostly horror films) in New England.

Check out JW Ocker's blog and pick this book up before your next New England road trip!

http://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/

New England

I originally wanted to write mostly about the great state of Kentucky and other areas close by. I still want to keep the theme here pretty much related to Kentucky or areas outside of Kentucky that can easily be visited in a day or weekend trip. For the moment, I hope my reader(s) won't mind my writing about my travels through New England and the states between there and Kentucky.

I know, this is a pretty big stretch for a Kentucky Travel blog, but, for what it is worth, I did the entire trip, there and back, in my car within about 1 week. We left Friday evening around 5 and got back the following Saturday pretty late. We made it a little north of Portland Maine. We made notable stops in several cities.

I will write over the next few weeks about some of our favorite stops. This was our 4th time making this specific trip, so a few areas are becoming pretty familiar to me as a traveller. We did visit 10 minor league baseball parks, seeing games at 5 of them. Feel free to check out my mentions of them on my other blog, kentuckybaseball.blogspot.com.

I love Kentucky and I love the entire country. Getting in my car and just going somewhere is such a treat and a privilege. Not many decades ago, it was an event for someone to travel just a few miles. A trip for my grandfather in to town was somewhat of an event. Now, it is no big deal for me to make a 2500 mile trip in a week just for the fun of it!