Loaded up and ready for departure…
We arrived dry, if not a tad chilly, and got camp set
up. Two tents with one tarp to share,
above them.
At least it would give us
decent protection should the elements turn against us. And it also provided protection from the
acorns. Yes; the acorns! These things were rifling down through the
leaves with what seemed like way, WAY too much force than they should have had,
just from detaching from a branch. They were
slicing through the foliage and hitting the ground with loud “Whump!” sounds. I looked around, expecting to see squirrels
hurling them at us, but couldn’t make anything out in the thick canopy above
us.
(The tarp worked well enough to keep the insides of the tents dry,
but it rained so hard, there was a ton of mud splatter all over the tents. When I got home, I had to hose everything off.)
We needed some lunch
and found this place.
This crab had a bad day…
We found lots of these poor dead crabs over the course of the weekend. I’m not sure how the seagulls are able to
finagle these things onto their backs – some of them were good sized. But finagle them they did, and then dissected,
disemboweled and digested them.
For some reason, I was struck with a need to stack some
rocks, so I did…
From there it was off to a brewery to check out their products. And just for us; special parking out back with the rest of the trash…
Ta da! Beer, courtesy
of Banded Horn Brewery!
As was the decrepit area below…
We only stuck around for one beer and had decided to head off
to the one to check them out, when we happened to spot…
That’s right; a distillery, right next door to the
brewery! Unfortunately, they didn’t open
for another 20 minutes, but since the next brewery (Publik House) was only 0.2
miles away, we figured 20 mintues was plenty of time to head over, try a beer
or two, then come back. As it turns out,
we stayed for a couple beers then decided to head back toward Bentley’s and the
party waiting therein.
BYOB? Damn.
But the food was so good we came back here on Saturday (even though my
omelet with salsa arrived as an omelet with a side order of sausage).
Off to the beach!
The rain hadn’t hit yet but you could see it was coming…
Here’s a lineup of the villains, waiting for their next
victim…
From there it was off to a brewery to check out their products. And just for us; special parking out back with the rest of the trash…
It was the only stout they offered and was an Imperial. Oh, and it was very sweet (as expected) and I
didn’t really care for it. They did have
a nice back deck to hang out on. Very
industrial setting, as you can see in the background.
I thought these star-shaped anchor plates were pretty cool…
But…there was still a bit of daylight left in the sky so we
decided to hit the shoreline one more time.
The tide was on its way back in but hadn’t reached my stack of rocks
yet. The stack of rocks that’s right
over…what the...? They’re not there…? Walking over to the spot, I found that
someone had actually destacked my rocks.
They hadn’t been knocked over because they were all in a pile at the
base of the boulder I’d stacked them on.
Who does that? So I figured I
might as well restack and go even a little higher this time…
From there it was off to Bentley’s for the evening. The weather outside was cold and drizzly so
most folks were hanging out inside, and that’s where we hung our hats for the
evening. It was raining pretty well by
the time we turned in, and I could hear the rain coming down in buckets over
the course of the evening.
The next morning, it was still raining pretty well. Not quite as hard as it had been overnight,
but still enough to dampen my spirits (which is probably why I didn’t take any
pics from Saturday). We showered and
headed off to Mike’s Diner again for breakfast.
When that was done, we walked back outside to find it was raining pretty
good again, and we still didn’t have a plan for the day. Looking at the weather on our phones, it
looked like it was going to be ass all day. What to do? Well, inland looked like it was missing the
rain so we opted to point our tires westward, and head toward the house in
Wolfeboro.
As it turns out, we found some
decent roads; great scenery but the road surfaces weren’t always that great. We hung out at the house for a bit, I napped,
Greg watched some tv. Checking the
weather again, it looked like things would calm down in the amount of time it
would take us to get back, so we headed back eastward.
After getting almost all the way back and
finding the rain had become just an irritating drizzle, I suggested we head
back to the shoreline one more time while there was a bit of daylight
left. So off we went. No sooner had we ridden about a half-mile
past Bentley’s, than the drizzle turned to full-fledged rain again. We continued on to the shore, did some
walking around, I tried stacking some rocks again but gave up since they weren’t
cooperating. (Oh, my second stack of
rocks was left alone for the tide to knock over, as the stones were scattered
all about, on the far side of the boulder I’d stacked them on.) We saved a small crab who was stuck out of
water (found a nice tidal pool with lots of hiding spaces for him), looked for
some more flat stones for Patty, and called it a day.
We arrived back to camp, got showered and cleaned up...so of course
the rain started coming down in buckets again. What
the hell. Since all we had was our two
small tents and no standing room between them, there was no place to hang out,
so there was nothing to do but head up to the bar as quickly as we could before getting thoroughly soaked again.
The rain kept coming down so folks who would
ordinarily be all spread out outside were instead; all crammed inside. We lucked out in that a couple got up from
the bar shortly after we arrived so we parked our asses and took in the sights
for the night. One of the best sights
was the barmaid who kept leaning over the beer cooler in front of us. No complaints there!
When the night was running late we headed back – and it was
raining even harder now. All through the
night, it seemed to rain harder and harder and each time I woke up (my back and
neck are becoming less and less agreeable to sleeping on the ground), I could
hear the droplets pounding the tents and the tarp. At least the sound was loud enough to drown
out the acorns which were still hammering down, too.
The next morning, the rain had let a smidge. We cleared camp as quickly as we could and
hit the road. Fortunately the rain
clouds thinned a bit and we pretty much had just a very thick mist/drizzle for most of
the ride home.
It felt so good to roll in to my driveway; thank God, I was
done with riding in the rain for the weekend.
Tenting gear was hosed off, laundry was set into motion, and then it was
my turn; a nice hot shower to warm the body back up.
A quick run to the food store for supplies, then it was back
to make strombolies for Bill and Zach who came over to watch the Pats game with
me. (No need to go into any detail on
that, it was painful enough to watch just the one time.)
Greg and I talked it over quite a bit and have come to a unanimous
decision; from here on, trips to Bentley’s will entail renting a room. My first year here, the temps dipped into the
20’s – not excellent for sleeping outside.
On top of that with all the rain this year, it just makes sense to go with a
room. Less to pack on the bike, less to
worry about in terms of the weather.
Which of course means the weather will probably be dry and in the 80’s
next year, but if that’s how it turns out, it’ll be worth it.
There you have it; Bentley’s 2016.
Ride Hard, Take Chances
No comments:
Post a Comment