Our last day in New Hampshire

It's Sunday, we went to church this morning to a little church about a mile down the road from us, Twin Mountain Baptist. It was a little white building with a steeple, looked like the little country churches you see in magazines. They had an evangelist speaking today, It was like going back it time to our childhood, he was loud, told silly jokes and his preaching was direct. He surprisingly made some political comments, not telling us how to vote but expressing opinions of how things are in the world. All the music was directly from the hymnal which we held in our hands, there was a piano, a clarinet and an accordion that was wired for sound and in fact sounded quite a bit like an organ playing. I'd never seen an accordion played in that manner before. You may or may not know but I took accordion lessons when I was little, maybe I should have continued. After church we came home, changed clothes and went to a town about 35 miles away for lunch at the Muddy Moose. We then just took another sightseeing drive, it was the clearest day we've had since being here so were able to see some mountains we'd missed before.

Speaking of mountains, the one we drove up, Washington Mountain, now has snow on the top and the tours can only go about six miles up because everything is iced over up there. Guess it was a good thing we did that early in the week.

This is a view of at the beginning of the assent to the top of Washington Mountain.  Beautiful colors, some ground on both sides of the road. Looks nice and peaceful, can't show views of road near the top but it was anything but nice and peaceful.

This is at the top of Washington Mountain, there is reported to be quite a view from this location but you can't see anything for the clouds.

Well, now for our exciting moose hunt adventure after dark. Last night we took a moose sightseeing tour. We went prepared with coats, gloves, earmuffs, caps, blanket, cameras, tripod and hot chocolate only to find that we would never get out of the van. Pam called me just as we got into the van and the driver was getting in himself, to see what we were doing and to hear my voice, she said.  I had to whisper to her that we had just boarded this van for a nighttime moose hunt, she nearly bust a gut laughing. I talked to her later and she said she sat there laughing about 5 minutes, just thinking of us moose hunting at night.

We did get to see about 3 moose. The driver just drove up and down this road near a lake and marsh looking for them. He drove and shined a spot light out into the darkness.  We spotted one and watched it until it disappeared into the woods then continued our search down the road.  We weren't having much luck so he got out of the van, turned off all the lights and stood outside making moose calls.  Well there were about 12 of us inside that van in total darkness, Beverly told me I should call Pam and tell her what we were doing at that point. I didn't cause I wouldn't have been able to talk to her without busting my own gut. We all began to giggle about our situation, Rick said that we might really be on a snipe hunt. I wondered of we'd actually run out of gas and the guy just walked off and left us, until I heard his moose calls. Anyway, I guess you just had to be there but it was soooo funny.  Well, the moose did not come running out of the woods so he got back in and we continued driving looking into the light he was shining into the woods hoping to see a huge buck with gi-normous antlers.  We did see a couple others, one female actually came out into the road in front of us, crossing back and forth in the spot light like she couldn't make up her mind which way she wanted to go. She finally decided and bounded off into the woods.  This all lasted about 3 1/2 hours, crowded into a van with 10 total strangers. There was one woman who was a nut case and ask the dumbest questions in this teeny tiny voice that was sooo annoying. She was worried about the size of moose teeth, were they 3 inches long, 2 inches long, 1 inch? did they eat bear? It was all we could do to not laugh at her. We tried taking pictures but the windows were so fogged all you could capture in the lens was blurry, we'd used everything we had to try to keep them unfogged, kleenex, napkins, shirt sleeves, I even offered to take off my shirt for Rick to use but decided that would have a counter effect. We'll all have to come up here some day and go moose hunting together. 

We leave in the morning for Orchard Beach, Maine. It's along the coast just south of Portland. Russell is flying to Boston tonight and will be there until Wednesday for a meeting about LIFT camp. Pray for his safety and Cassie and Wyatt while he's away. Wyatt also has strep throat. Any way it is odd to me that my baby will be only about 75 miles from where we are and I won't be able to see him. Waa! Waa! Waa!

I need to get off here and do a few things preparing for our departure tomorrow.  I love you all and miss you more each day. 

Can't wait till we all go moose hunting.

Love mk