Thanksgiving in New Hampshire!

We enjoyed a delightful Thanksgiving with my relatives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire! I finally found some time to download the pictures from my phone, so I could post them here. Some of them are modified - I've started using the Waterlogue app to add a little watercolor touch to my stories.

We flew out of Denver, just a few minutes before the beginning of what turned out to be a heavy snowfall, that left nearly two feet of snow on the ground behind us. Lucky us! Here's a pic of the cold threatening sky, while we were having breakfast at my favorite Denver airport restaurant - Pour La France.

Denver snow pics, courtesy of my neighbor, about halfway through the storm.

Portsmouth was cold and breezy. We managed to take some fun, chilly, windy walks around the local neighborhood, to the Hannaford grocery store, and in a few local parks. My cousin gave us several guided tours of the local area, as we were driving around. We visited Odiorne Point State Park, and the Seacoast Science Center, on one of those cold and windy days.

The Science Center in the park included some fun aquariums. There was an interesting story about the birth and migration path of a young whale, and how the sea lanes can have a disastrous effect on the whale population. My niece had never seen a live seahorse before!

The walking path along the shoreline provided some wonderful views of the Piscataqua River, the Whaleback Light observation point, Fort Foster, and many other beautiful points of interest on the opposite shore.

We followed one of Odiorne Park's loop trails out into the local forest for awhile. It was very peaceful, with a few historical monuments to be found.

Thanksgiving day was fun - everyone helped get the food ready, and the dinner was delicious! We enjoyed the meal with my cousins, and their extended family and close friends. It was very pleasant, even for someone like me - out of my element with people I don't see regularly.



We enjoyed a short walk in the Urban Forestry Center, and my cousin discovered a new trail there. I felt privileged to be offered the opportunity to walk their dog Midnight, who was very rambunctious and energetic. Managing her leash took both hands, so I didn't get to take any pictures.

We ventured into downtown Portsmouth for a meal or two, some sightseeing, and window shopping. It's a beautiful New England town! Here's a pic of Portsmouth's Pilot boat, in front of their three very colorful signature tugboats. We visited a pop-up shop nearby. Interesting concept - it's a popular ice cream shop during the warm season, and a venue for local artists to display their wares, during the holiday season.

A big snowstorm hit New England while we were there, starting just a day before we were due to fly back home from Boston Logan airport. It started when we were inside the theater, watching the "Knives Out" movie, which was well done and very entertaining. We were surprised to find it snowing heavily, as we walked out to our car. This is the pretty little snow-covered bench in my cousin's front yard, the next morning.

The snow lightened up, just before we had to drive our rental car to the airport. We were a little concerned about the drive  in the new snow, but the roads were fairly good, and we made it to Logan as easy as pie. The highway was lined with beautiful snow-frosted trees, most of the way down the coast. There were a few slushy slippery adventures in lane 1, and the usual mayhem approaching Boston on I-95 and SR-1. I'm not a fan of relying on shuttle buses to get from the car rental to the terminal, but it is what it is... And the unexpected twist is, we jumped on the blue line bus, settled in for the ride, and then learned, long after it had passed our terminal, that they don’t all stop at every terminal. Luckily, and partly due to my extra-cautious advanced planning, we had lots of time, so we were able to enjoy the extra walking back to our departure terminal.

Continuing our airport experience... we were at our gate with plenty of time, so we were delighted to be able to run off and grab some crab cakes for dinner at Legal Sea Foods. I remembered really enjoying this restaurant, when we were at Logan two years ago, but didn't realize it had moved to a far more convenient location since then.

We were finally aboard our delayed flight home from Boston... and the aircraft’s windows were frozen over. My camera saw through it way better than I could. With that much ice on the vertical window, I wondered how much must have accumulated on the horizontal surfaces of the fuselage and wings. I was a little surprised when a mobile deicing vehicle came to do the job, but so glad that they were ready and able to deice our plane.

Finishing up my story, with a watercolor filtered photo of the tail of a nearby aircraft, as we were pushing back from our gate. We were glad to have an uneventful, albeit late-night, flight home.