The Kate Lost Factor

So I drove around NH today. It's really lovely, and I must have detoured through Sherwood Forest because I saw a sign for Nottingham.

I went to the seaside. That is what the highway signs called the beach, the ocean, la playa - the seaside. So I went. Getting there was a snap. Rt 3 to 101 going East. Stop before you get wet. Hampton looks like any town on the Cape and it reminded me of a cross between Marblehead, MA - at least the side streets - and whatever the town is at the causeway to Long Beach Island in NJ. Hampton State Park is probably quite nice, but by the time I got there the gate was locked and a police car was sitting there. Now to the boardwalk.



Hampton's boardwalk makes Beach Haven look like a sleepy seaside hamlet. Like the busiest, craziest block on LBI to the power of 6. Not the place I would want to stay for a vacation, and none of the local eateries looked like a place that a single woman at the shore would frequent unless she had designs on finding some company for the evening. Pass.

So I headed back to Manchester, and here is where the Kate Lost Factor comes into play. I'm okay with the reverse course thing until I get to Manchester and get off at what I was sure was the exit where I entered the highway.

Maybe not.

Google Maps cannot work if there is no service.

So I did some driving around. Got really turned around. Got straightened out. Had an "Aha, that where I am!" moment and returned to the Radission. And because I wasn't already enough of a salmon swimming upstream, I leave the parking garage as a wave of "conference boys" and "conference girls" all are heading out for the not so clandestine Ice Cream Outing. I need no convincing to join then when I hear that the place they are headed serves real food. This is what I need.

Two hours later I am back in my room having observed but not consumed HUGE creations of ice cream. "Pudding Ice Cream." No one would tell us what flavor of pudding. Yum? (It's pinkish, so we are told.)

Image of Hampton Beach by crschmidt