Destination: USA

Fri 9th Oct
On standby, but got on a flight to Boston without difficulty. US immigration takes place in Ottawa Airport, before leaving Canada. Much less problem than we had anticipated, but Philip (as a non-US citizen) had to be fingerprinted and photographed. Getting to Boston and through the airport was the easy part of the day. Next came a long, slow car journey, with virtually nose-tail traffic for 50+ miles north to Manchester, the only place we had been able to book accommodation. When we planned our vague itinerary, we hadn't realised that Mon 12th Oct is Columbus Day and Americans descend on New England (especially Boston), in vast numbers, for their bit of nostalgia. (Memo to The Rough Guide: list Coloumbus Day as a national holiday). So now to Plan B: spend 4 days driving and hiking in the New Hampshire lakes and mountains area, then visit Boston later. However, this was 'Leaf Peeper' weekend when hundreds of thousands of people take advantage of the long weekend to go to ....the NH lakes and mountains to take in the fall colours. Accommodation was in short supply and at a premium. We had found a vacancy for the first night in a reasonable motel in Manchester and finally managed to book 3 nights in a drab but adequate motel in the north of the White Mountains region.


Sat 10th Oct
The drive to Manchester had been training for the drive north - nose to tail and crawling for about 50 miles, iitially along the multilane highway and later through small tourist towns with dreadful, tacky "attractions", intermittently set in attractive wooded and lakeland scenery (a bit like a cross between Ambleside and Blackpool on a bank holiday in the UK). Later, the traffic thinned and we drove the last 30 miles through forested mountains with spectacular fall colours. When we stopped at a National Park Rangers' Centre to pick up information about walking in the area, a flock of wild turkeys wandered through the car park and attempted to get at fruit on the lower branches of a tree, by jumping up, usually missing the fruit before crashing back to the ground.