Editor’s note: Mark Bradford is contributing occasional posts from his diary on traveling the country with his wife Wendy while they rent out their Mishawaka home for six months.
Day 6 of our 190-day sojourn
July 2 — Franconia, New Hampshire in the White Mountains — Mittersill Alpine Resort
My wife is not a thief.
Unless it comes to the free breakfast items at the motels where we stay.
Those of you who are old enough to remember Lucille Ball and Ethel Mertz in the classic comedy sketch where they are hired by a chocolate company and the chocolates come by too fast on the assembly line, Lucy is stuffing them down her clothes to keep up.
Yep, that’s Wendy at the free breakfast counters.
She will tell you it is not stealing because she does not eat breakfast. Instead, she simply takes several (anywhere up to 10) items, stuffs them in a bag, and walks away. She has even made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the road from the breakfast items. And don’t ask me about the free salt and pepper packets … We have walked out of the breakfast area with complete lunches for two.
I keep thinking someone is going to say something but they never do.
Amazing. I look at it as stealing; she looks at it as a cost of doing business for the motels. Then again, I eat the sandwiches. So there you go.
Today was our first full day in Franconia and my goal was to do nothing all day. Some of you know I am in the final stages of getting a book self-published and so I spent the morning doing the final edit.
Wendy was only able to stand it for about three hours (she is NOT a do-nothing person) so soon we were on the road. We checked out a local golf course (horrid) and then wandered around Littleton, New Hampshire.
And a very cool thing happened. Our friend Ann from the Boston area who we met five years ago had posted on Facebook she was also in the area. So we met and sat outside at The Iron Furnace Brewery in the shadows of the mountains and chatted about a variety of topics. The fact that she was up here is completely coincidental and all three of us enjoyed hanging out.
I think that is what vacations are supposed to be about.
We filled up the gas tank ($3.50 a gallon) for $41.00 and I paid for beers and nachos with Ann ($34.00) so our out-of-pocket expenses were $74, which ups our totals to $604. We are way below our projected expenses ($200 per day) but once we are through with our prepaid expenses, we expect it to go up pretty quickly.
Thanks again for reading. New Hampshire is beautiful, even though the Canadian smoke came to this area today. And it is supposed to rain all day today.