New Hampshire - Day 15 - Lake Sunapee

Crow's Nest Campground
Sunday, 15 July 2018

today's route

I spent the day wandering around Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire's 5th largest lake.  It has 3 lighthouses in it, which seems like a lot for a relatively small body of water.

I was interested in Sunapee in the first place because of the John Putnam Thatcher mysteries, written by Emma Lathen back in the 1960s and '70s mostly.  At least the best ones are from that period.  John Putnam Thatcher, the main character, was the executive vice-president of the 3rd largest bank in the world and originally from Sunapee, NH.  Being in the neighborhood, I couldn't resist dropping by.  Thatcher was in his 60s in the first books, so he would have been born around the turn of the century, and I was curious to see if I could find an idea of what Sunapee might have looked like back then.  125 years later it's not so easy.

The photo on the right shows the town is built on a small natural harbor of Sunapee Lake.  The photo on the left show a little of the town, including a few buildings that may well have been there in the early 1900s.

It's an old town, built on hills around the lake area.  From the photo on the right, there's a road called Lake Avenue that winds around the lake shore, about 1½ lanes wide in some places, with homes on both sides for miles.  And pedestrians.  Many many of them.  Some walking dogs, some out for a hike, but mostly it just seemed like walking along the road is what people do on a sunny Sunday morning.

The houses had names like Shorenough and R Point of View.

I stopped to ask one couple if the road really did go somewhere (it did) and they told me the lake and in fact the whole area had been carved by a glacier long ago and I should keep an eye out for "erratics," stray boulders left behind in the glacier's retreat.  Farther down I think I saw one.  You'll have to blow this one up to see more clearly but I think that's what that rock is.  Reasonably spectacular scenery, too.

The lighthouses http://www.lakesunapee.org/lighthouses/ are hard to see from the shore and I had to hunt for them.  I saw 2 of them but just couldn't figure out where the third is.

one lighthouse

another lighthouse

At the south end of the lake is Mount Sunapee, which turns out to be a ski resort, apparently very popular in the winter.  It has an elevation of 2743' at the peak, a 1510' drop, and 10 ski tows.  And is reasonably priced, it seemed to me: last winter, a full day of skiing in midweek would cost someone my age $66.  Not bad really, though a great deal more than I used to pay 40 years ago.

And to top off a very pleasant day, in Newport on the way back to the campground, I found a very nice laundromat.  This one had new machines with plenty of room around them and an attendant to help me when I got an error message.  A good day altogether.