Last year my sister Cheryl and I took a weeklong road trip out to Ohio to visit
my Aunt Dorothy which I've blogged about here. It was a lot of fun and we
decided to make it a yearly thing. This year, for various reasons, we couldn't
do a whole week but we could do a weekend trip up to Western Maine to
attend the Ellingwood Family Reunion. We'd meet up with Aunt Dot, her daughter
cousin Diana and Diana's husband Gary in Gorham NH and go to the reunion and
visit some family related places as well.
The original plan was for Cheryl to pick me up here at around 6am but she changed
it to 7 which was fine by me. It's been years since I got up before 6am. Heck, there's
nights where I've been up blogging and went to bed at 3:30 in the morning, but once
I'm in that bed, getting up and awake is a bit harder! At any rate, I was outside and
waiting with my suitcase and backpack(loaded with 3 three-ring binders of genealogy,
among other things)when Cheryl arrived and after loading everything into the car we
set out for Maine. Cheryl had a GPS device and it sent us north through Boston and
onto Route 1 thought Saugus and other North Shore towns. As we drove, Cheryl and
I talked about how the time estimated for our arrival in Gorham seemed much shorter
that the three hour or so drive we remembered from previous trips when we were younger.
That thought kept niggling away at us and by the time we got to Dover, NH Cheryl decided
to check the GPS. And that's when we discovered that the set destination was Gorham,
Me., not Gorham, NH! A quick change and we were off on a 76 mile course across NH on
Route16. Estimated arrival was now about 11:45 am.
The weather was nice and the traffic wasn't too bad so we made pretty good time until we
reached Conway, NH. Conway's certainly grown over the years and the traffic on Route 16
was so bad it added an hour to our travel time. It began to cloud up a little and there
were some light sprinkles but nothing major as we drove up through the White Mountain
National Forest on 16 and right into Main St at Gorham. We were all staying at the Mt.
Madison Motel but we didn't see Gary and Diana's van when we got there, and since check
in time wasn't until 3pm, we decided to go eat lunch. We found an Italian restaurant
on Main St. and I wish I could remember the name because the food was good. Cheryl had
Italian wedding soup and I had an eggplant parmesan sub.
I'd noticed that the air was cool and windy when we'd gotten out of the car and by the time
we started back to the motel at around 1:30 there were clouds moving in so it looked like we
were in for some rain. Our Ohio relatives were at the motel when we entered the parking
lot and we visited with them in their room until it was time to check into our own.
But the first day of the weekend wasn't over yet.
To be continued....
3 comments:
This is exactly like what would happen to me if I used GPS, which is why I stick to maps. Hope the rest of your trip went off without a hitch (though I suspect it didn't).
Actually, that was the only hitch for the trip with the GPS.I think the best advantage it has over maps is that if you find your route is detoured or closed for some reason, it finds the alternate route for you quicker than looking at a map.
Oh,and it will tell you where the nearest Dunkin' Donut shops is,a
necessity for civilization!
The truth be told, the GPS sent us in the wrong direction because my husband- trying to be helpful- entered the wrong state when setting our course for the motel.
I have to say, though, I enjoyed the scenic tour of New Hampshire rather than the boring highway trip we would have experienced without the error.
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