So, we flew into Boston, in heavy snow, after spending much of one Friday evening in the Newark airport feasting on airport hot-dogs and popcorn. It was already nearly midnight and we had a two hour drive to Waterville Valley. After renting the car, we spent about 10 minutes trying to thaw the trunk out enough to open, but eventually we gave up and just piled the luggage in the back seat. As it turns out there were no fast food restaurants still open anywhere in the Boston area as far as we could tell, and believe me we got off at nearly every exit to check. So we just decided to worry about it later and drove into New Hampshire. As it turns out, rest areas in New Hampshire close their rest rooms after midnight. I'm not sure why they do this, but it can be very annoying. Luckily the third rest area was still open. We didn't want to push our luck so we ate there too. Pop tarts and Fruit Pies are at least as nutritious as hot dogs. Anyhow, we did finally arrive at the hotel, around 2:00 in the morning and I should add, it was still snowing. The view from our hotel is shown at left; the actual mountain is way off in the background there.

The skiing turned out to be pretty nice once we figured out the cardinal rule of Waterville Valley which is: don't ski all the way to the bottom of the mountain. The picture here shows the view from the lodges at the bottom and as you can see if you look closely, the mountains levels off a bit way up there and then past that is another set of slopes going up. Actually, there's yet another set past that but it's way up there in the fog. Anyhow, as long as one doesn't return to the scene of this picture, one can get on a ski lift fairly easily. Way up there at the top is the Schwendi Hutte, which is not only fun to say, but it's warm and serves good food (except for the potato salad). Other things to do in Waterville Valley mostly includes ice skating with every small child in northern New Hampshire, or alternatively you can sit in a hot tub with every teenager in northern New Hampshire. We chose to do neither of these things, opting instead to sit in the hotel pub and play darts and Jenga (we only lost one piece behind the bar) and listen to local bands do bad covers of Credence Clearwater Revival songs (and worse covers of Dave Matthews). It was a comfy, mellow pub with a quiet and tolerant bartender.

There's not much in the immediate vicinity of Waterville Valley. However, we did journey to nearby Loon Mountain one night (in driving snow) to partake in snow tubing. Unfortunately we have no pictures as not many cameras would've survived the experience of bouncing uncontrollably down an icy slope on an inner tube. Besides, the better picture would've been of one of the people who were unable to jump on top of a stationary inner tube and landed on their face in the snow instead. Also relatively nearby is the state capitol in Concord (shown here) which really is the only thing of any interest in Concord as far as we could tell. The drivers of Concord do however get a thumbs up for not running over David as he took this picture.

And now we shall end this trip with a small history lesson. As we all know by now, way back in 1770-something a couple of frisky farmers with guns shot at some British soldiers and now we have our own currency. Those shots were fired here (in this picture), on the Lexington green (it is apparently green during other seasons), in front of the old and picturesque Lexington church. The little gray monument lists all the "Americans" who died in the battle (there were about seventeen or six or twelve or some fairly low number). We sincerely hope everyone appreciates this picture since we had to trek out into several feet of snow to take it. There's a nice Minuteman statue at the other end of the green, but we would've been killed in traffic had we tried to take a picture of it. Sorry.