This is Mt Webster as seen from the Willey House.
The weather is pretty bleak right now, but it was gorgeous all day yesterday, and again this morning. We’ve been wandering through the White Mountains and checking out waterfalls. We’ve also gotten to know North Conway a bit. Now we are getting ready to go to our anniversary dinner.
This little get away has been fantastic. Just wonderful.
iPhone pics from the mountains, complete with snow on a summit. Is that Mt Washington? D90 pics to follow.
This is sort of what I am needing right now.
A scenic view from the top of a mountain…
Crystal clear water…
Life hidden away in the woods…
And the love of my life.
That sort of sums up what I’m needing right now.
Just take me away from it all. Just for a little while.
Where’s the good leaf peeping in MA and NH this year? We always do the Kanc. I’d like something different this year.
Does this work?
or maybe this?
Yeah, I did a my-year-in-pictures thing the other day. It was fun. What the hell, thought I, why not do it again? This time I’ll run fast and loose with the whole one-pic-from-each-month thing. I’m crazy like that.
We have to get our pics of the Sands Bridge in Methuen before she collapses. Or maybe I should say before she finishes collapsing. It’s already started. Also, I don’t think I found a relative in the Grove Street Cemetery, but who knows?
In February I finally finished an RPM Challenge on time. It only took me five tries. We also got a new bed. Jen’s penguin approved.
In March, the kids and I became wilderness explorers. Hipstamatic came along for the ride. Actually, we just wandered around in the woods behind our house for a little while. It was fun.
April in San Diego. I want to go back RIGHT NOW!
May gave us baseball, Bar Harbor, and my first up close New England Lighthouse.
The picture pickin’s are slim in June, but we did get a new Rush album (and it is awesome) and we got another fantastic piano recital from the kids.
July offers more choices after a spontaneous trip to Boston, and a week long stay in Maine that included some time in the mountains of New Hampshire.
In August we went to the Top of the Hub for the first time in my life. The views of my city were spectacular. We also spent some twilight time on Hampton Beach.
September had mountain waterfalls, leaf peeping, my first ever attempt at photo-walking in Tewksbury, and more Rush.
October continues to belong to Washington, DC.
The camera didn’t come out much in November, but I did torture the cat, and my wife, with my camera phone, and we did celebrate Turkey Day.
December had more mountains, more mountain streams, and Christmas.
And there we have a second view of my 2012 in pictures. Forgive the gratuitousness.
Happy New Year (again).
In January I took my swanky new lens out and about in Methuen to see what it could do. These trips usually focus on the Spicket River, but this time I went to the Merrimack.
As usual, February focused on the RPM Challenge. This year my saxophone came out of retirement.
In March I finally managed to get a few pictures of the night sky that only mostly sucked, as opposed to the normal total suck. This is the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter, all at once.
April brought us back to San Diego and I swear, each time we go there it gets harder and harder to come home.
In May we brought the kids to Fenway Park. Dustin Pedroia and the Red Sox won the game, but went on to their worst season in 100,000 years.
June was very quiet, photography wise, but we did get another piano recital in the wonderful Nevins Library in Methuen.
In July we spent a week on Long Lake in Maine. I managed to accidentally take a few pictures that didn’t suck.
In August we spent a day wandering around Portsmouth, NH including Strawbery Banke.
In September we took the kids to see Rush. Now they know what I’ve been talking about all this time.
In October we took the kids to Washington, DC and tried our best to see everything in the short time we were there.
In November I didn’t post a single picture taken with my D90. I did, however, learn that this existed and it made me feel a little better about the human race in general.
In December my wife and I ran off together to the mountains for a few days. It was wonderful to get away.
And there you have it. A brief synopsis of my 2012, in pictures. I could have posted hundreds of pictures. Maybe I will later on.
Any time we go away and my D90 comes with us I have to milk as many posts out of it as possible. This is a good example of that.
Technically, we stayed at a Bed and Breakfast. In reality, we had a house to ourselves. There was a legitimate Bed and Breakfast, called Old Field House, but the building we stayed in was a single house about a half mile away from the main building. Our building was called Holiday Ridge. It had four bedrooms, a fire place in the center of the living room, a nice deck on the back of the house, a private hot tub (that was a huge selling point for us), a nearly vertical drop behind the house, and the previously mentioned spiral staircase of death and doom. It also had a full kitchen and dining room.
Here you see the futon we used a couple of times, as well as the top of the spiral staircase of death and doom.
Here we see the fireplace. Note the comfy chair behind the fireplace. It was in fact very comfy. Too comfy. Once I sank into it I had a legitimately difficult time getting out of it.
Here are the glass doors to the back deck as seen at night.
Here are the glass doors to the back deck as seen in the morning light.
This is the back deck, following Friday night’s rain. This was a really great spot, but it was way too cold to make use of it. Should we ever find ourselves back here in the summer we will definitely make better use of this.
The room felt a little dated. Not much though. The bedrooms down stairs were much more so. The furnishings could probably go for an update. We slept in the master bedroom the first night but the bed had a serious sag into the middle. The rest of the time we slept in one of the other bedrooms and it was 100 times better. Still, we did not pick this place for the bedroom decor. We picked it for the hot tub. Yes, we did.
The tub is outside, below the back deck. It’s not as private as we hoped it would be. It was private in that we didn’t have to share it. It was not private in that there was a house next door that could see it. My wife has a seriously bad back. I have a bunch of regular aches and pains in my back and my feet (and my brain, har har). The air temperature ranged from the high 20’s to the mid 30’s. Getting from the house to the hot tub took about five steps, but damn those were a cold five steps. Once we were in the 100 degree water though. All of our aches and pains washed away. We both just sat there, melting. I could have spent the whole weekend in there. Hell, I could have slept in there.
We didn’t see a single wild animal during our stay. We were hoping to see a moose, or even a bear. Assuming, of course, that said moose and bear were close enough for us to see them, but far enough away for them to not be able to see us. Get it? At one point I had to go outside after dark to put the cover on the tub. I had this crazy thought go through my head as I stepped outside that some mountain lion or something was going to try to drag my fat ass off. I figured if I got jumped by a cat I would try and flip us both into the tub. Cats hate baths, right? That would probably be enough to save my life, right? Right?
Inside the Red Head's Head 