Kaya and I went to see her dad, Toby Whitefeather, who is a country singer, at the Casino Ballroom (don't worry, Mom, it's not really a real casino, it's more like an arcade). It was fun, I liked it!
There are so many beautiful homes along Ocean Boulevard, the road that goes all the way up the beach.
THOSE are the Isles of Shoals, my host finally got a decent shot of them.
My host drove Kaya and I out to Odiorne Point so we could go walking (she says it's too easy of a trail to really be called a "hike" but she is not only 18 inches tall!).
I'm SO EMBARRASSED
Odiorne Point used to be a private neighborhood of summer homes in the 19th century and up to the 1930s. Then it was bought by the US Navy for defense purposes (there are many abandoned forts scattered up and down the coast- did you know German submarines came right up into the harbor in WW2?), and later when it was decommissioned, the state of New Hampshire bought it for a nature preserve and marine science center.
It's really peaceful.
The temperature dropped really fast this week. That little pool of water had ICE IN IT.
The stone memorial says "Here landed in the spring of 1623 the first band of Englishmen pioneers in the planting of New Hampshire consecrating this soil to the service of God and Liberty". Which means, this is where they believe the first ever *English* people settled permanently in what would become New Hampshire.
Kaya says we need to remember that her people were here for 11,000 years before that!
I'm glad I made friends with her. It's cool that we can be different races, different religions, from different parts of the US and even go to different types of schools (I'm home schooled, Kaya just got into an "exam school" in Cambridge, Mass) and then we found out we both like some of the same things!
That white building in the distance is the Wentworth By The Sea, the NH seacoast's oldest and largest "grand hotel", named after the Wentworth family, who were the New Hampshire colony's first governors. They were deposed during the Revolution but NH forgave them, I guess.
This is the first thing the first permanent white settlers saw when they arrived. I think I would have been intimidated, it doesn't look welcoming at all.
Kaya and I played pretend under the berry bushes.
We were forest elves
Like from Lord of the Rings or Narnia.
I fell out of the tree!
But I only hurt my pride.
The sun was setting at about 3:40 so we had to leave.
The road to my host's mom and dad's house. They took her out for pizza and then we went home again.
Because it SNOWED TONIGHT!11 Only a little, and it will be gone by morning but SNOWWW!
We had a really fun sleepover when I got back to the apartment, with gingerbread cookies and too much soda.
