In 1987, my husband, Rob and I took our brand new Mazda 323 and headed up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. This was our second time up there, the first of our annual Labor Day weekend trips.
Rob, as usual, was looking for a shortcut. The side road he was looking at took only 45 minutes to get across, while the major road took over an hour to go around.
Of course, we opted for the shorter road.
Logging was a large part of New Hampshire’s past. This is what they called an old logging road. Most of them are unpaved and not in the best shape. In other words, something that I thought a new car should not attempt to even go across. Rob, however, had other thoughts.
Things didn’t start off too badly. The road was paved, at least it was in the beginning. It turned to gravel about 5 minutes later. When it turned to a pure dirt road, that’s when the fun began.
We passed grass, bushes and trees. Not one house in sight, not one sign of civilization. More grass, more trees. Lots more trees. The stones in the road didn’t help. Of course, you know I’d have to go to the bathroom. So I went in the bushes. It was only fifteen minutes since we started down this road. It felt like an hour.
Back in the car, on the road again. More trees, more grass. More stones in the road. I asked Rob if we had a spare. I was sure we were going to need it. A four wheel drive jeep was coming toward us. . We never saw that jeep again. I fiqured it disappeared into some great underground tunnel that was waiting to swallow us up as well. I looked at my watch. Ten more minutes had gone by.
Wait a minute! What’s that I see on the left? A mailbox! On the box were the words "U.S. Male". Could there be a house nearby? Sure enough, there were two houses on top of the hill What difference did it make? I would never know and who cared, anyway.
A little past the mailbox, the road split. Okay, which way now? Luckily, for us, Rob spotted a small arrow pointing down the road. Like sheep being led, we followed the arrow. More grass, more trees. More stones banging against our new car. To our left, a small national park appeared. We decided to stop off and go to the bathroom. No bathroom existed. Back in the car again. It was now almost forty minutes. When would this nightmare end?
It didn’t last too much longer. We finally drove into what looked like the center of town. I say looked because it was only four white houses in a circle. In the middle of the circle was a general store. We pulled up and parked the car near the general store. There were two white haired gentlemen standing outside the store, talking to each other. They looked up as we pulled in. I wondered what they could possibly be thinking.
Rob asked if I was hungry or thirsty. I said yes and he got out. He spoke to the men before going inside. I saw Rob point in the direction we had come and one of the men shook his head. They talked a few minutes more, then Rob went inside.
He came back out ten minutes later with two iced teas, snacks and fruit for each of us. "You are not going to believe what they just told me," Rob said. "Tell me," I answered. That’s when he told me.
As soon as he had gotten out of the car, Rob wanted to find out where he was so he spoke to the two men. They told him he was in the town of Center Sandwich
"How did you get here?", the other man asked. Rob pointed in the direction that we had come. "Sandwich Notch Road?" they both said. Rob said yes.
The two men looked at each other, then back at Rob. "That road was washed out two years ago," he said.
We have not taken a short cut in New Hampshire since.
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