Thu, Aug 16

Conway, NH: Up early (for us) this morning and showered and dressed and headed out to explore. Right next to the campground is a historic homestead that the Forest Service bought and restored. The house and barn were built in the early 1830s. It’s great that the Forest Service bought it because it was the only homestead left on the “Kanc”. We walked over there and explored the grounds, the house and the cemetery. One of the daughters lived there all her life until about 1930. Pretty amazing. After that we drove up Bear Notch Road and picked up Rt. 302 heading northwest. The mountains are even more rugged up there. We stopped at a historic sign along Rt. 302 describing the history of what was then called the Crawford Notch—actually it’s still called that (now Rt. 302). Anyway, back in 1771 these two guys, Crawford and Sawyer, were tracking moose and one of them climbed a tree and saw this valley through the mountains they had heard about in Indian lore. So, Crawford went to see Governor Wentworth—British governor back then--and told him about what he had discovered and what it would mean for commerce in the area to have an easy east-west route. The governor made a deal with them—that if they could bring a horse across this wilderness alive, he’d give them a parcel of land and help them build a road. So, they took this poor horse and in some cases literally dragged him across some of the rough areas and then had to lower him with ropes over the rock ledges. The poor thing. But they did it. Where’s the ASPCA when you need them? Made a circuitous route and came back through No. Conway so I could stop at one of the outlets. Worked out well, traffic was coming the other way and Mike was able to stop at the chocolate store. Back to the campground and our really nice site. We found out that Jigger Johnson was a logger extraordinaire. Logging turned this area into a pretty busy and profitable place back in the 1800s.