Fall Colours Tour 2014: Shaker Village and Silver Lk, New Hampshire

Sunday morning we got up to more soggy weather in Maine. It had rained overnight again. We didn’t bother taking the kitties out for a wet walk in the woods, but rather just packed up and headed out in the trailer. We stopped at Alton, New Hampshire for a nice sunny kitty walk beside a creek. There was a playground and tennis courts, and lots of bushes to sniff and water to check out. We enjoyed the sunshine after several rainy, cold days in Maine (and Quebec).

Fall colours in "Liberty Tree Park" near Alton, NH

Sammy enjoyed the tennis courts! Good roll & leaf chasing

Lovely colours around the creek

A rope bed!

We stopped at Canterbury to tour the Shaker Village, one of the largest Shaker Museums in the NE part of the States. At one time, there were 300 Shakers living there on 4,000 acres, but now there are only 3 Shakers still living (in the whole U.S.) and this particular village is a little over a quarter section of land, with 17 buildings still intact, most of which are open to tourists. Interestingly, most bldgs have their own tour guides that will tell you about what you are looking at. I saw my first "rope bed" which is where the saying "sleep tight" comes from as you had to tighten the ropes each night before bed.

We also took a 90-min tour of some of the bldgs that were not open to the public. It was a really wonderful experience to learn about the Shakers, their way of life, and all the innovations and technological advances that they made.

They had their own clothing, medicine and furniture manufacturing businesses, and they invented many machines to make their work more efficient.

"Dorothy" cloaks, one of their best selling clothing pieces

Kitty butts... watching chipmunks

The kitties got out for a walk around the Shaker Village parking lot, after closing. There is a stone wall that runs along the parking lot, and that was pretty well the point of interest for both of them! There were chipmunks and birds in the bushes along the wall, and both cats had their butts in the air and their heads down, peering into the bushes.

Sam took a bit of a stroll along the wall and had a good view of some of the buildings in the village. It was one of their favorite "kitty stops". Even the cats like the Shaker Village!

Silver Lake - with fog

We were pushing dark when we left the Shaker Village and had to find a place to camp! We ended up at a trailer park which the Bitch (our GPS) called a campground (but wasn’t) and they directed us to another place not far away (thank goodness). We set up in the dark and carried the cats in to the trailer so we didn’t lose them, and it wasn’t until this morning (Monday, Oct 6^th) that they were able to explore the place. We are parked on Silver Lake, near Belmont, New Hampshire. It is a lovely lake, and campground, and typical of the ones we are finding – mostly they have seasonal campers with semi-permanent residences. This particular campground only has 10 spots reserved for “nightly” rental and the rest of 77 spots house trailers with attached decks and porches and screened off areas. It’s really something. We got out for a walk this morning in heavy fog, but it lifted before our walk was over and we had nice views of the lake and fall colours.