New Hampshire Without Plans

PHOTO: The Element Hanover-Lebanon. (Photo courtesy of the Element Hanover-Lebanon)

Sometimes traveling without plans is the best way to explore. I recently discovered a fellow thespian from high school was playing Evita in a summer stock production in rural New Hampshire, and I had a free weekend so I thought I'd head up to a new region (the closest I'd ever previously been to New England was New York City) and check things out.

Flying into Manchester, New Hampshire, from Texas in the middle of August is a transcendental experience. The brief transit from the terminal to the rental car lot, stepping into find arbor-fragranced air that was a good thirty degrees cooler than the century-mark temps I'd grown accustomed to, was certainly welcome. It was also rather novel to me (as I've mostly lived in big states) to drive from one end of a state to the other in about an hour. Learnings on the drive include the fact that Manchester is a picturesque small town situated on a river, the toll road to Concord is only a dollar (and the toll collectors are very pleasant if you have to pay cash) and liquor taxes are low in New Hampshire so there are a lot of outlets where out-of-staters can come stock up on booze.

I think it first hit me that I was in New England when I stopped into a small local grocery store (I'm a bit of a foodie and like to see what people are buying when I visit new places) and during my search for a soft drink overheard a small child proudly exclaim to her mother that yes, she knew it was odd, but she would like fish chowder for breakfast because she was particularly fond of fish chowder. It smelled heavenly. She's on to something, I thought, and I followed her lead. It was a good decision.

The 1924 vintage Lebanon Opera House (which does double duty as City Hall) was an utterly charming venue in which to spend an evening of regional theatre, and was an evocative reminder of how town squares, and live performing arts in particular, continue to form as strong a pillar of discourse in small communities today as they did in the last century. Equally as entertaining was the eclectic local Saturday night crowd dancing to a rock standards cover band in the Salt Hill Pub, itself in a historic 1882 building just across the street.

Photo via Flickr/Jimmy Emerson

There were plenty of pleasant takeaways, from the fish chowder for breakfast to the need to rise early when staying in hotels with a free hot breakfast included in the rate (otherwise it gets crowded), but the most important takeaway for that brief, spontaneous weekend might have been that if you're ever planning to explore a bit without definite plans, this particular region of New Hampshire is a great place to do it.

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