The Home Stretch

Only 10 days until we are finally able to sit down and sign the paperwork for our new home. We are really looking forward to getting settled. After telling you yesterday that we haven’t had any major stress over this move, today was the first day that we both recognized as “stressful”. Luckily, instead of rushing all morning and starting off on the wrong foot, we got ready, leashed up the dogs and took another walk along Main street in search of coffee and hot chocolate and went a little off the beaten path to see what there was to see. 

Even their fire station is cool!

This gorgeous church is for sale. Maybe I’ll buy it and turn it into an allergen free bakery and cafe. Wouldn’t that be incredible?!

There is no shortage of buildings to admire.

I spotted this snowman in a storefront window. They had so many it was hard to choose. I collect snowmen and this one was so cool, I ran inside to take a closer look. It’s a carved gourd! And it has a light inside so the light shines through the snowflakes on his belly.

Even the Italian restaurant that delivered our pizza last night is in a neat building.

We turned the corner from here and stumbled upon a huge feed store with all kinds of animal supplies and neat stuff. I bought this snowman bird feeder that lights up at night!

After we finished our walk we set out to do laundry. I was dreading it, but thankfully it only took about an hour. We did 3 large loads of laundry…$20!! I have to admit that it was certainly the cleanest and nicest laundromat I’ve been in. Maybe that’s how they get away with charging so much.

Once the laundry was done we had less than an hour to check out of the hotel so we hightailed it back, packed up all of the animals (a huge job), hooked up the trailer and headed out of town toward Concord, NH to find a heated water hose.

On the outside of Concord we glimpsed the most beautiful church through the trees. We were trying not to get sidetracked but had to go see it. It turns out that it was on the grounds of a private Catholic college that was one of the most beautiful colleges we have ever seen. What lucky students!

This is what the majority of housing looked like on the campus. The whole campus was like a beautiful little village.

Once we were done being lookie lous, we headed toward Concord. I was shocked when we came up on it so quickly. That college campus seemed so secluded and like a town unto itself.

Quite a different reality from the college campus!

Sweet little houses along the way.

And like most towns in New Hampshire, more stunning churches. I can’t wait until we have more time to hopefully take a peek inside some of them!

Part of downtown Concord.

It makes me a little edgy to drive through the middle of these towns towing a 25 foot trailer. It’s cumbersome and we still had no navigation tools on Tony’s phone, and the one I had downloaded on my phone kept getting confused, so we weren’t quite sure where we were going. And wouldn’t you know it, but who calls us right in the middle of a congested downtown area while we’re pulling that dang trailer? Telenav technical support. Now some of you might think that’s a good thing. But it’s not. Because when you’re on the phone with them, whatever has to be done takes forever. And of course each time you talk to one of them it’s a different person so the story has to be told and re-told. If I have to hear Tony explain how irritated he is with Telenav and go through every detail of what’s happened over the last three days with his phone one more time…

So what did Tony do? He pulled our huge trailer and truck right over to the side of the road on the main street!! People were looking at us and I’m sure the shop owners whose businesses we were blocking from view were not happy. Just so he could talk to the ding dong Telenav people who up to that point have done absolutely nothing to resolve the issue. As he went through the story again, I was thinking how nice a very large bottle of wine would taste right at that moment. Unfortunately, I had the movers pack it in storage so I didn’t even have the convenience of walking back to the trailer and having a little nip.

Instead, I ignored all of the people staring at us like we were idiots and got out of the car to snap a couple of shots.

This is the capitol building. We were parked directly across the street. Just to the right of my photo, in front of the capitol building was a beautiful manger. That shocked me. But I don’t know why, New Hampshire is the “live free or die” state.

On the sidewalk to the back of the trailer was this clock tower. All of the mechanisms on the inside were gorgeous and I could see them moving through the glass. I took a quick picture but didn’t want to linger or get closer because I didn’t want to encourage Tony to stay in that spot any longer.

I was relieved when I jumped back in the car and Tony started to drive off because we were already running late, couldn’t figure out where Camping World was so we could buy the hose, and weren’t going to make our check in time at the campground…but he turned into the Holiday Inn Express driveway where we sat for another half an hour while the tech guy tried to figure out what was wrong with Telenav. At this point, I can’t stand Telenav and I found myself screaming inside my head, “they don’t know what they’re doing!!!! Just download another navigation thingy and let’s get on with it!” And of course,  they didn’t resolve the problem. We have now spent more than 4 hours on the phone with the Telenav people over the last three days.

We found our way to Camping World, bought the heated hose ($100) and headed toward our new camping destination in Henniker, NH. However, on the way, Romeo decided to have a complete panic attack in the backseat. We have no idea why but he was panting and shaking and trying to hurl himself into the front seat after being a perfect car dog for 3,000 miles. Why did I have them pack all my wine again?

We got him calmed down and made it to the entrance of camping destination just in time for Tony to get a business call, even though he’s on vacation. So we sat at the entrance for another 20 minutes while he handled that while the camp ground host wondered what in the heck we were doing and why we weren’t pulling in and getting checked in.

Tony finished his call and we finally found our way to our site, unhooked and did all of the this’s and that’s that are involved in trailer camping and Tony ran into “town” to grab some tortilla chips so I could make a quick nacho dinner for us since neither one of us thought to take meat out of the freezer for dinner.

He returned and at the exact same moment, with the can of refried beans in my hand, we both remembered that we don’t have a can opener. Ha! So we improvised and we ate, and life could just be so much worse than these little annoyances so we just had to laugh about it.

Now we’re settled, I’m fiddling around with this blog post, Tony and the dogs are lounging on the couch, and we’re watching DVD’s of Star Trek Voyager. Thankful that the 10 day countdown has begun and soon we will be getting settled in our new home. Until then, we’ll do more exploring and get to know the area. Oh, and did I tell you? Right when we pulled into our campsite to unhook, the Telenav people called again. Turns out it’s his phone carrier’s problem and now Tony will have to call them and go through the whole thing all over again. I’m going to the store tomorrow and stocking up on good ole’ fashioned maps.