Business Trip (part 1) - The Road Trip
Day 1 continues…
So with a plan in mind, plus my final project for B&W Photography class, I was off again driving the highways and byways of New Hampshire. I was able to find an easy route heading due east from the airport. The highway was empty looking and long stretches of highway made it look like those up I-5 past Mount Vernon.
One thing I noticed was the rental car was from Pennsylvania, and not the mother town. The license plate for the state of New Hamsphire is “Live Free or Die” — This made more sense when I went through the coastal towns seeing their graveyards, bringing back the memories of when this country as a whole was under attack.
So I took the route to Portsmouth that Marc graciously helped me map out. I intended on going to Hampton Beach and then up to Portsmouth. Well knowing how I drive and if I have a camera, I make stops on the way. *Note: Most of the pictures I took where with the black & white 35mm, I decided not to take the nice one for its first outing.
The land is relatively flat with slight rolling hills. It took me some time after taking some off-ramps to take pictures. I finally made it around 3pm to Hampton where the beach life and town was similar to San Diego, CA. They had surf hotels and candy shops, along with a wide sandy beach about 5 miles long full of people. I made it into some of the candy and souvenir shops, then spent most of my time walking around and then finally stepping my first time into the Atlantic Ocean! It wasn’t that cold either! I then continued driving going north along the beach. When I think of ‘The Hamptons’, the beach houses are what I think of.
They are big white houses with big grass fronts right in front of the windy beach road.
I kept driving finally making it into the old town of Portsmouth and then realized I started losing direction. So many roads and intersections. I finally saw a huge bridge and got on to see that is was the 95 going into Maine
.. So I made it into Maine and found a small trading post.. which actually was bigger then any REI in Washington and had huge rooms dedicated to every adventures sport, including a whole loft just for hunting.
So I made a U-turn and got back on the HWY 95 near Portsmouth. I knew I did not want to go back West, nor go south to Boston, so I took HWY 495 and suddenly realized I was in Massachusetts! Whoops! So I made it past the University and then back on HWY 3 until I made it into Nashua. From there I made about 4 circles trying to find the way back to my hotel. This was one long day :p .. Finally I found a pizza parlor and grabbed a small cheese pizza and headed back to the hotel, just in time to talk to my girl and then jump into bead. Tomorrow is the first day of training!
