Day 80 -- Half way between a hot place and a cold place

Today we had the bright idea of traveling up higher into New Hampshire and then cross over the border into Quebec Canada.  On our way we stopped at 3 more covered bridges, but then we discovered a great marker by the side of the road that pointed out that we were half way between the North Pole and the equator--this was outside Stewartstown, NH.  Avis and I did a short hike and saw some pretty scenery.  All the state highway signs in NH have this profile of a man on a mountain so we decided we wanted to hike up to where you could see it.  There was a big sign and big parking lot, etc. pointing to the viewing site for this natural profile.  Once we got to the end of the trail where the view of the "old man of the mountain" was supposed to be, we found out that all those granite boulders that make the profile had fallen to the ground in 2003!  So all we saw was the place where the former old man of the mountain's profile had been.  We got a great laugh out of that when Bill told us when we got back to the car that he had looked it up on the internet about 2 minutes after we started our hike and knew it wasn't there anymore!

Granite image of man on side of mountain

Cool quote from Daniel Webster about the old man

                                                          




We went through a town named Pittsburg which was an independent nation from 1832-1842 when the local folks didn't like the politics of the local leadership and just pulled out.  This independent nation was called the The Republic of the United Inhabitants of Indian Stream Territory.  After 10 years this republic was brought back into the fold by way of the NH militia.  We also went through a town called Berlin, NH, which was and still is a big logging industrial center.  Lots of historic buildings.  After WWI, the townspeople changed the pronunciation of the town to burr' lin so it wouldn't be confused with the German city.

Berlin

                                                     

The big river through Berlin lent itself
to creating the logging business there--
logs were sent down the river to two different mills

Convict moose escaping the police

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All I have to say about the crossing into Quebec is that it was a horrible ordeal.  The border crossing area was in a very remote farming area with only one booth to go through.  No one else was there but us, and the Canadian border agent asked us the normal questions you get when crossing a border--and then he told us to pull over under a covered carport-like area.  When he came around, he ordered us all out of the car and to stand in front of it and he and his partner began going through everything in the car, all parts of the car including under the hood and the under-carriage.  After taking all our things out of bags, etc. and looking through all of Avis' money, they didn't put it back, they broke a Christmas ornament I had purchased just that day, and they didn't bother to zip up the wallet that held the money or put anything back in our bags.  We were all just furious but what can you do?  Then after it was all said and done, the lady border agent decided to play nice and got us a map to show us interesting places to go.  We went in and drove about 45 minutes through some beautiful farm country and left the province--just had a bad taste in our mouths my then.  And of course everything in Quebec is in French and we weren't going to try to tackle much of that with the locals!

Border crossing

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Border crossing

Farm in Quebec

Name of the area of Quebec we were in--Valley of the Coaticook