I mentioned yesterday that Fred had gone down on Sandy Beach Road to see if he could find the bird Bob Kimball had mentioned. Turns out it is likely an osprey. While Fred was there, he took pictures and chatted with the Byrds and the Porters. He took pictures of the slalom course, and I have numbered them so you can get an idea of how much space the course covers. Last night I had just the Sandy Beach slides ready for you, but for some reason the Blogger site was having trouble I couldn't publish. I called Fred for help, but we still couldn't make it work. Around midnight we gave up, but Fred was up at the crack of dawn and made a new slide show with those slides and the ones I talk about below. Now everything seems to be working ok, but this is one really long slide show. Here they are: slides

In case anyone was looking for us today, we went to N. Woodstock, NH to meet Fred's brother Tom and his wife Ellie and their oldest son Greg, for lunch. We enjoyed the trip down through Franconia Notch - just beautiful, in spite of the extreme heat. Not much going on as far as tourists, but all the fun spots were getting spruced up. North Woodstock is just south of Indian Head and Clarke's Bears. We were a little early, so we took a ride along Rt. 3 after we got off the interstate. Brought back a lot of memories. When I was a kid, our family often went for picnics in the White Mountains, and we'd stop to see the Old Man of the Mountains, holler across Echo Lake, sometimes walk the Flume, but the biggest treat was to go to see the bear act at Clarke's. Here's a picture of us - from left to right, Grandfather Bolton, Grandmother Bolton, my mom and my dad, Uncle Jim Jones, then in front, Uncle Bob Bolton, me and Uncle Bill Bolton. Aunt Rachel was taking the picture. I don't know exactly where we were, but I'm sure it was in the White Mountains, and I bet we went to see the bears before we went home. We didn't see the bears today, but there were workers on the towers where the animals perform, and a sign promised a "show at 12 o'clock."

It was swelteringly hot, even in the mountains today. We were glad we had air conditioning at the Woodstock Inn where we had lunch, and in the car. We took the road that goes from Woodstock to Woodsville, past Lost River, on our way home. The river was pretty much lost today - nearly dry. The river bed was all those nice smoothly rounded river rocks and what water there was seemed to be hardly moving except in the steepest gorges. We took pictures along the way.

After crossing the river into Vermont, we decided to take the back roads through Ryegate and Groton, then to Peacham and Danville. We hadn't been on these roads for a while, either, and enjoyed the ride.

It was a nice day. We enjoyed seeing family and it was way to hot to do much here at home. The thunder storms tonight seem to be cooling things down a bit. I heard on the scanner there were some power lines down in the Waterford area, and some trees came down here and there, so people had lost electricity. In this heat, that can be dangerous. There were calls from people on oxygen. I'm not hearing as much now, so perhaps things have quieted down some.