Faith, Folklore, and Friends

We spent several days at this resort in Lincoln, New Hampshire, on our recent road trip. It was comfortable and beautiful.  I'm guessing it will look a lot different in a few months when the ski resort behind it is full of snow and people. On a cool August morning, the White Mountains looked a lot like the Smokies. We highly recommend this resort if you are traveling in the Northeast. Don't forget to guess how many miles we traveled.

  The  Lord  is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.   He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.   For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.   As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.   Like as a father pitieth his children, so the  Lord  pitieth them that fear him.   For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. ~Psalm 103:8-14

The Appalachian Trail is a 2200 mile hiking trail that extends from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. The trail goes through the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where we were staying a few weeks ago. The Appalachian Trail passes through the Smoky Mountain National Park, and we have taken short hikes on it there. However, I have no desire to walk the whole trail.  Really?  2200 miles without indoor plumbing?  I love communing with nature just fine, but when it is time for bed, I'd rather commune with a Hampton Inn. Our Baby Boy planned to hike it one summer a while back.  He worked out with heavy packs for weeks before, made food packages for us to send him at certain points, and spent lots of time with maps.  He flew to the start (or end?) of the trail in Maine to begin his journey.  He successfully climbed Mt. Katahdin and started the 100 mile Wilderness hike.  He used a water purifier that make him extremely ill, and ...

The summer of 1993, when I was doing some research in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, I became addicted to bagels.  After I returned to Alabama, I searched everywhere, and there was not a real bagel to be found.  Sure, there were frozen things available in the supermarkets here, but I'm talking about bagels fresh from the oven, with a big slab of cream cheese in the middle. In Franconia, New Hampshire, I found some real bagels at this little coffee shop. They even had a big chicken outside to welcome me. They were just as good as I remembered.  Hub got an everything bagel and I had the cinnamon/raisin. We each ate half, then swapped.  We do this all the time when we are having different things to eat. It is hard to say which one was the best.  They were both amazingly good. Maybe more so because I knew it might be years before I have another one. Back in '93, after looking and looking for fresh bagels, I tried to make some.  I went ...

The first time I heard about Mount Washington, New Hampshire,  was in a Meteorology class in college.  It was listed as a place that had the worst weather on Earth.  The weather was nice the day we were there.  We had taken sweatshirts, but didn't need them. We decided to drive to the summit on a private road.   How bad could it be? You will have to ask Hub, because my eyes stayed closed almost all the way to the top, then on the way back to the bottom. There were several visitors at the top, including many hikers from the Appalachian Trail. This is the cog railway that takes visitors to the top that have the sense not to drive.  Hub said it would have been just as scary as the road we took.   They say that on a clear day, you can see Boston and the Atlantic Ocean.  We were not able to see them, but the view was fantastic, with mountain peaks as far as we could see.

We love to travel and we love the west.  We have made many trips west of the Mississippi, so we thought we should go somewhere different this year.  We set out with a plan to see the New England states. In 1993, I received a fellowship to do some research at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.  So we had seen beautiful Boston and Cape Cod, but nothing else in the Northeast. One item on our bucket list is visiting all the states, and we wanted to mark some off with this trip. We went to Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia,   Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey , New York, Connecticut , Rhode Island , Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont , Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky. The ones in bold type are states we had not been to before. It was all beautiful. How many miles did we travel?  Good question.  Just for fun, post your guesses in the comment section below or on Facebook.  When I fi...

Y'all know I love morning glories.  I've written about them before  and I am still planting them every year. Hub and I just returned home from a long road trip.  There was a lot of rain while we were wandering, and the morning glories just went wild.  When we got home, they had wound themselves around the glider and among the pots of rosemary and oregano. The glider is on the deck, and the morning glories have grown a long way to get there. I have no problem sharing the glider with these lovelies!

I love the  Lord , because he hath heard my voice and my supplications. Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live. Psalm 116:1-2   KJV

And He said, My presence shall go  with  thee, and I will give thee rest. ~Exodus 33:14

Cherry Mansion was built on a bluff overlooking the Tennessee River in Savannah, Tennessee.  During the Battle of Shiloh, it served as Union Headquarters for General Grant and his staff. General Grant and his staff stayed at Cherry Mansion before and after the Battle of Shiloh.  The story goes that they were eating breakfast on the morning of April 6, 1862, when they heard cannons from Shiloh, seven miles up the river. They boarded a steamboat and traveled to the battle site that would become known as one of the bloodiest battles in American history.  Cherry Mansion is privately owned at this time.