We’re going mostly OT tonight for a mini trip report filled with foodie notes. (Skip to the bottom for small build update).
I took last week off from my day job and mostly just took it easy spending time with the wife. I like to enjoy good food, so when we are “on vacation” that is always a big part of my plan. On Sunday we tried a local Mexican food restaurant for lunch that we hadn’t been to before.
Manana Mexican RestaurantThen we went and caught the early showing of the new Mission Impossible movie.
I already reported on Monday, not much done. Tuesday Yvette and I went to
The Dog Watch Café for lunch. I had a really good Cuban sandwich with added 1000 island dressing. Excellent pork, just the right amount of coarse Dijon mustard, and crispy pickle. Yvette had their house made veggie burger that was huge.
From there we went over to
The Velvet Mill. It’s a collection of art studios and small startups that Yvette has been wanting to visit for some time now. Unfortunately, because it was a Tuesday, most of the studios and businesses were closed… including the
Beer’d Brewery. The glass studio was cool, and we shared an organic smoothie from the juice/cleanse joint. We also got some tomato basil quark (similar to yogurt) from the cheese monger. It went well on the little pesto naan pizza things Yvette makes frequently.
Starting on Wednesday we had a nice little get away to a B&B in North Conway, NH, called
The Red Elephant Inn.
We stopped in Nashua, NH, and tried to have lunch at our favorite bistro there, but, unfortunately, they didn’t seem to be opened for lunch during the week, just dinner after 4pm.
We went across the street to
Martha’s Exchange, a brewery, and I had another Cuban. Not as good… thinly sliced pork that tasted a little gamy, way too much yellow mustard, and limp pickles. Not at all a fair comparison compared to The Dog Watch the day before. The beer was drinkable, but not memorable.
After checking into the B&B the first evening we had a decent dinner at a local pub/restaurant called
Hooligan’s. Nothing fancy but the locals were friendly. I had a reasonably good meal of fillet medallions on a demi-glace with bleu cheese, red mashed potato, and snow pea pods sautéed with mushrooms and a few kippers for a salty tang. Yvette had a chicken/pasta/veggie/garlic bowl. We took a piece of bread pudding (white bread with raisins and a little lemon sauce… unremarkable), and a piece of hazel nut torte (hazel nut mousse covered in chocolate ganache… quite good) back to the room for later.
The B&B served a 3 course gourmet breakfast each day. On Thursday it was a small (two bite) crème puff stuffed with mocha cream and a little sprinkle of confectioner’s sugar; mixed berries marinated in a little light syrup with a small dab of softly whipped cream; and a frittata with sliced tomato, feta, red onion and kale served with hashed Yukon Gold potatoes and onions, and a couple of small link style sausages.
We did the
Notch run on the Conway Scenic Railroad following the Saco River from NOCO up to Crawford Notch and Lake Saco. Fabulous weather and scenery; too many good pics to post all of them.
We ate lunch at the cafeteria in the
Appalachian Mountain Club Lodge, just a short walk from the
Crawford Notch Depot (Google images). We enjoyed the train ride and scenery a lot, but by the time we got back we were glad that we were done; it was a 5 hr round trip including the 1 hr 10 min layover at the top.
Dinner was at the
Hobb’s Tavern & Brewery in West Ossipee. The Imperial Stout was 11.4% alc, but boy was it one of the best tasting beers I’ve ever had! I put it up there in the top four best beers, and might even be #1 if I could have done a side by side taste test (the other three would be Guinness, Dirty Penny, and a Sam Adams limited edition special that came out at Xmas several years back). They will only serve you two, but that’s more than enough! Dinner was one of the specials; smoked brisket slices with crumbled blue cheese on mixed baby greens salad, with halved grape tomatoes, thinly sliced cucumber slivers, blue cheese dressing and a few lightly floured and crispy fried onion shavings for a topping. Not mentioned by the waitress, there was also a pile of diced mango to one side; I couldn’t believe how well the mango paired with the blue cheese! Yvette had grilled salmon on a Caesar salad.
The B&B had those Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate nuggets (w/ almonds) out all the time and a complimentary bottle of red wine out for guests to enjoy in the evenings, so we availed ourselves of that on a regular basis.
Being my B-day week, I went off the wagon and splurged on a sampler of Johnny Walker, including splits of Black, Gold, Platinum and Blue. I nipped at those in the evenings saving the Black (my old staple) for another time (… back on the wagon again now).
Friday’s breakfast was special. My chocolate/chocolate chip muffin came with extra sliced strawberries arranged on surrounding dabs of whipped cream, a candle, and a happy B-day serenade. The muffins were pleasantly standard size (small by today’s norm). The fruit course was a house specialty; banana cannoli (half of a banana, peeled, split and filled with cannoli stuffing, a couple of small chocolate chips, and a drizzle of dark chocolate sauce over all. The main course was vanilla French toast with a mixture of fresh berries softened just slightly in a simple syrup and extra bacon for the B-day boy.
The weather was wet and cloudy with moisture hanging in the air and periods of rain, so we decided not to drive up Mt. Washington. A quick web search found
Diana’s Bath’s Waterfalls. We took the long way around to get there so that we could drive by
The Bernerhof Inn, where we had spent our first vacation together some 16 yrs ago. Funny thing is, they gave away a trip to the Bernerhof on Wheel of Fortune recently. After dealing with the 'on your honor' $3 day pass parking permit and a 0.6 mile walk thru the woods we enjoyed climbing around on the rocks and getting the chance to dip our feet in the cold water to cool off. I have selected a couple of my more interesting pics to share, but will defer to a link for better pics of the falls. The cairns shown in some of the linked images were, thankfully, gone when we were there.
Diana’s Baths (Google images)On the way back to town we drove up to the top of
Cathedral Ledge (Images). Weather was rainy, but the view was still good, and the parking pass carried over.
Apparently this is a popular rock climbing location, as we could see a few anchor points and a guy on the adjacent face making an ascent (… in the rain!).
For lunch we went to
The Sea Dog Brewery. I started with the dark beer sampler and selected a pint of the hazelnut stout from there. The lobster bisque was quite good with a lot of big lobster chunks in it. The chicken Waldorf salad wrap was so-so. Yvette seemed to enjoy her French onion soup and small order of bean chili nachos; even though what came to the table was the ground beef chili version (she was okay with it and didn’t want to take the time to send it back).
Still raining, we went back to the room and watched Val Kilmer in “The Saint” out of the inn’s DVD collection.
For dinner, we went to what I will call a “puppy mill” Mexican restaurant (
http://www.jalisconh.com/); where the place is packed on a Friday night and they process as many people thru as they can. The guacamole was decent but the rest of the food was bland. Yvette chided me for expecting better Mexican this far north and/or this far away from a larger metropolis.
Breakfast on Saturday, our last, was a banana nut muffin; sliced strawberries marinated in brown sugar and built into a parfait glass with softly whipped cream; and a large slice of bacon cheddar quiche accompanied by the Yukon golden potato/onion hash combo.
I guess I got crossed up when I checked the times at
Michael Timothy’s, so we side tracked thru Nashua on the way home (not really out of the way) and found them to be closed again at lunch time. I had really been looking forward to stopping eating there this trip, but we went with
Mexican again. This time, the food was redeeming and we both were grateful that we had given it one last try. I had the 5 enchilada sampler plate (cheese, bean, chicken, beef and steak, but strangely no rice or bean sides), and Yvette had the enchiladas verde (with rice and beans). We didn’t order guacamole, but I’m sure it would have been good because they prepared it table side.
We got home early evening and had planned to go out with the gang that night, but timing ran rather late for the others so we opted to stay in instead.
Sunday we finished up the changes we had been working on for the ballista arms and got those ready for Dave to truck north, gave Dave a tour of the latest updates on the camper build, then I sneaked back up to the loft and did a little light sanding on the last round of spackle. Meanwhile Dave and Karl got the CNC to mill out a circle in a piece of plate to mount a coolant pump in the catch basin of the mill.
Back to work again, yesterday I touched up a small area of the roof edge on the street side where I had over sanded a bit (due to a slight pitch change in the roof spar where the ceiling panel splice backer was fit). Success came after cutting a custom shaped applicator; I just couldn’t get it right with a straight edged putty knife.
Then I spread the rest of that spackle tub up on the top of the hatch.
Karl hinted about high build primer again (…after canvas and epoxy), then later when I was trying to decide if I would need another big tub of spackle, or could maybe get away with the little one, he had no hesitation confirming the large tub.
Sure is pretty eh !!! 
by GPW » Tue Aug 18, 2015 6:53 am 
Happy birthday for last Friday. 
