American Thumb - Day 11 - North Conway, New Hampshire part 2

America has made me chipper.  I talk to people here.  I even talk to a weird guy with a clipboard in North Conway who wants to sell me a time share in the mountains.  Normally, I avoid anybody in the street who's looking for attention, but for some reason I not only talk to him, I'm nice to him.  In a busy hotel lift, an old guy dressed up to the nines, wearing a medal and on his way to some posh dinner asks me what I did to my thumb.  I tell him I sliced the top off it while chopping vegetables.  'What ya do that for?' he asks.  'I was really really cross,' I say and everyone in the lift laughs.  Admittedly, it's not terribly funny and maybe it's the horrendously English turn of phrase that has them giggling.  But that's all it seems to take: a glimpse of a sense of humour and people are happy, even if the sense of humour in question isn't a very good one.  When I've cleared my plate and a waiter asks me how the meal was, I tell him it was awful and we both laugh.  E rolls her eyes and with probable cause.  I don't imagine I'll be venturing into the world of standup any time soon, but I can hold down a conversation in America and walk away smiling and being smiled at.

The reason I've heard of New Hampshire and the reason I've wanted to visit for so long is John Irving.  John Irving is one of my favourite writers and most of his stories are based, in part, in and around New Hampshire.  He wrote The Hotel New Hampshire, so it is a buzz in itself to be staying in a hotel in New Hampshire.   He writes about the natural beauty of the place and I've always wanted to see if the images he conjures in my head are how they really are.  Yesterday, I got to grips with a damp, misty New Hampshire, which covers a good deal of what he writes about.  Today I was hoping to see the dry, sunny New Hampshire.  He also writes about bears a lot and I'm hoping to see them too.

The weather today is about as sunny as it could be, a glorious contrast to yesterday.  After a long morning lounging and playing in the pool, we head off to Jackson, a tiny, almost Alpine town nestled among the mountains and after lunch, head into the woods.  We find Jackson Falls, a series of waterfalls that cascade down the mountainside across a rocky riverbed.  The river is lined with pine and cypress trees and the mountains loom behind everything, the snow capped Mount Washington the largest among them.  There's nothing I can say to convey the beauty of it all, so here are a couple of pictures.  

Then we drove and wandered and drove and wandered and took photos some more.  We took some of the same photos we took yesterday, so we can compare and contrast the sunny weather with the apocalyptic weather.  The only disappointment with today's excursion is that I expect to see bears tumbling out of the woods, moose lumbering across every road, raccoons stealing things and beavers working hard in every waterway.  I don't even think I saw a bird.  I content myself with the idea that the bears have eaten everything else and have gone into food comas.

While in the pool this morning, we meet a couple from Massachusetts whose four year old daughter is splashing around with S.  The kid and her mum have red hair like E so they hit it off straight away.    The dad, Matt, and I join in too.  We talk about our kids and we seem to be raising them in a really similar way.  Among the other things we agree on, we're also nonplussed about sport, worried about Trump and think there's a bit too much processed food in America (Matt grows his own vegetables).  The best part is that Matt shows me where he cut the top off his thumb a few years ago.  He caught it in a fan belt and it took four months to grow back.  That seals the deal and we decide we should become Facebook friends.

I'm not just chipper in America, I can even make friends.  Get me.

Matt, if you're reading this, hi!