New Hampshire - Day 13 - Bethlehem/Franconia/Sugar Hill

Littleton/Franconia Notch KOA
Friday, 13 July 2018
Happy Friday the 13th!

today's route

Today I went looking for some specific sights I'd heard about - I think in an Off the Beaten Path type of guide book.

Bethlehem
Almost the complete opposite of Bethlehem, PA, being about a hundredth of its size with not much of its industry.  But attractive nonetheless.  I went to see its architecture, which absolutely is pretty.  Here are 2 samples; many more in the center of town a few blocks from here.

Another attraction wasn't so attractive for me but certainly would be for others, or at another time of year.  It's called The Rocks and is a Christmas tree farm with trails managed by the Society for Protection of New Hampshire Forests.  Apparently they have events near the holidays, and at other times you can go hiking in the woods.  The dogs might have been up for it but I wasn't.

I'd also heard about a place called Geppetto's Barn - and the name alone sounded wonderful.  I had to do some serious online searching but finally learned that the woodcarver who owned the store died recently.  So sad.

Franconia

the view from there

Here I was looking for 2 sights.  One was Robert Frost's home, now a museum frostplace.

The Frost Place

Their website said it was okay to go see the house and the view even when the museum wasn't open, so I went.  Cute little house.  Incredible view.  However.  Absolutely nothing said the road was only about 1½ lanes wide, or that the driveway was precipitous, or that there was no parking whatever near the house.  At the bottom of the hill, before turning onto the road, there was a small parking lot and a sign saying buses should drop their passengers at the house and turn around and come back down to park.  That meant to me there was a place for a bus to turn around.  Uh-huh.  If there was, I didn't see it.  I ended up pulling into the driveway, seriously scraping the bottom of my poor RV somewhere in the rear, jumping out and hoping the emergency brake would hold while I took my photos, then backing and forthing and backing and forthing over and over, trying not to hit the gate post or the daylilies and trying to get lined up for the turn-around before I actually left the driveway - wanting to scrape my bottom only one more time instead of over and over.  It all took maybe 10 or 12 back-and-forths but finally finally I got turned around.  This is the view of the road I saw at that point:

narrow lane, right?

[No daylilies were harmed during this stunt.]

I next went looking for an iron furnace, that turned out to be more interesting than I'd expected.

New Hampshire's last blast furnace

imagine doing this job!

One of those explanations mentioned an ore cart that was loaded with iron ore and taken by wheelbarrow to the furnace; somewhere else I read the wheelbarrow was carted by "a strong man" - and since that wheelbarrow isn't your garden variety wheelbarrow but instead is made of iron, and was filled with iron ore, imagine how strong that "strong man" must have been.

I also read that the smelter usually operated in the fall and winter when local farmers would be willing to work for low wages - $20-$33/month in 1850.  The Civil War ended the iron industry here because the war effort required furnaces to be built in Pennsylvania, closer to the population.  This furnace was abandoned in 1870; the wooden building that surrounded it was destroyed by fire in 1884 and the metal parts were salvaged for the war effort in WWI and WWII.  You can see the recovery effort described in the displays above.

Sugar Hill

The guide book recommended Harman's Store with, according to the store, the "world's

greatest cheese."  It's your basic little general store with something of everything and a sizeable cheese case.  I bought a half pound of Harman's cheddar and took it to the RV across the street for lunch.  It is indeed very good cheese so later I went back and bought another half pound.

Meanwhile, I was parked in the lot of the Sugar Hill Historical Museum and they opened while we were eating.  After walking the dogs I decided it was only right for me to go check the museum out since I was using their parking lot.

It's a small museum, as you might expect, but it had some surprises.  Their permanent exhibit included some sleighs, one of which belonged to Bette Davis, who lived here in Sugar Hill 1940-1961.  Did you know that?  I didn't.  She bought some acreage and a house and lived here when she wasn't working.  She married a man she met in Littleton and apparently it was a happy and successful marriage until he dropped dead on the street in California.  The whole world was stunned by her marriage except, apparently, the local folks who let her keep her privacy, which was probably one of the reasons she liked it here.

The museum also had a temporary exhibit about clocks and watches, and that too was interesting.  In the 1500s & 1600s watches were attached to clothes or worn on a chain around the neck.  King Charles II began wearing a vest in the late 1600s and put his watch in a pocket, thus setting a new fashion trend for men that lasted until WWI.  Women, back to the time of Queen Elizabeth I, wore wristwatches which were considered jewelry.  However, soldiers in WWI needed watches to synchronize maneuvers and found wristwatches much more convenient than pocket watches.

I didn't drive more than about 45 miles altogether, but there's a lot to see in this area.