HEADIN' WEST!!!

Left Concord this morning.  ...sigh...  Lots of hugs.  Who knew that in such a short time I could grow to like a family so much?!?

On my way out of Concord, it was recommended that I stop at the Cultural Arts Center, and omg - more cool statues!!!  This is me and a Great Dane.

 LOVE THIS!  Someone put this bust on the OUTSIDE of a window, looking in!  If my office wasn't on the 2nd story, I'd do something cool like this.  And of course I'd need a window...

 Just him.

 I would like to know the who/how/and how long of this one - it's just string wrapped and wrapped and wrapped around the branches on this tree.  Not just ON it, but wrapped around.

 First stop of the day, Salem, MA.  I got a cool smashed penny, but otherwise Salem was not as cool as I thought it would be.  Granted, I only had an hour on the parking meter.

 It was recommended that I add several RoadsideAmerica stops to my day, and for the most part, they were all BUSTS.  And for the most part, it was all my fault.  At one stop, I was looking on the wrong side of the road, and I'm not really sure what happened here.  I was looking for something presidential, and some chain-smoking scabby guy who lived across the street swore to me that it was the rock.  It wasn't.

 YAY!!  At 6:30pm, I got lucky with a RoadsideAmerica stop, #30.  There are several towns in the area that share names with large, international cities, so this guy put up the standard roadsign, but THIS one shows mileage to the smaller, lesser known versions!  Oh, and at 6:30pm - after starting at 9am - I was only 126m from my starting point according to GPS!!  Now, I had done lots of curving and twisting and totally changing directions, but still...

 The whole yard was neat.  I would have loved to explore, but a) it was raining, and b) there was a sign up saying that while we were allowed and encouraged to take pictures, we couldn't trespass.

Ugh!  Can kind of tell, but that's a life size Sasquatch statue in front of the cabin.

Had 2 more smashed penny opportunities.  One was at a wildlife park in their "Snack Shack".  The Shack was closed, but I could hear someone inside so I knocked.  A voice yelled that they were closed, so I yelled back that I didn't want anything to eat, just a smashed penny.  She opened the door, I repeated myself - while looking at the machine behind her - she yelled, "It's broken!", and slammed the door in my face.  Must not have been a good day in the Shack.  THEN, there was another one 8 miles out of my way in horrible, terrible rain.  I mean, windshield-wipers-on-high kind of rain.  I shouldn't have gone.  But of course I did.  I pulled in the parking lot of this...I don't know?  Ski lodge?  At 6:51, and they had CLOSED AT 6:30!!!  But I saw a ranger in there, so I knocked on the door and she let me in!  I had run to the door in the rain with only 51 cents on me, and once I got inside there were actually TWO designs that I liked, but a) that goes against my penny smashing rules (to get 2 pennies from the same machine during the same visit), b) I didn't want to run in the rain again, and c) I didn't want to make her get up and unlock the door for me again.  So I got one with a moose on it, because I saw lots of "Moose Crossing" signs today.

I started looking for a place to stay soon after.  I could have driven a little further, but the rain was HORRIBLE.  After 3 no vacancies, I found a family room with 3 beds for $129.  I'll tell you what, I thought about it, especially after he told me I was heading to a remote area, but I lucked up and found a room at the very next place!  So I'm at the Moose Brook Motel in Gorham, New Hampshire.  There are only 12 rooms, they all have screen doors, and if the rest are like mine, they have ceiling fans and HUGE bathrooms!!  Now it's quit raining, so I can run out and get some stuff from the car.