The New Hampshire Coast

Today Ashley and I took a trip down highway 1A, the coastal road that runs from Portsmouth down into Massachusetts. We thought we would drive for a bit and find a nice beach to sit on and read, maybe dip our toes in the Atlantic. The 1A follows the coast through Rye and Hampton, both of which have a lot of beaches, so I thought this would be an easy jaunt.

Turns out the New England coast isn't like the Washington coast. It's very developed. Ashley and I found ourselves driving through tourist town after tourist town, little Atlantic replicas of Seaside, Oregon, with businesses like the Aegean Inn and the Lobster Lock-up. Here's Little Jack's.

Lobsters are everywhere. They're on the Maine license plate, on many restaurants (almost every restaurant, cafe, or crappy food stand serves lobster), even on lots of signs, billboards, and hotel vacancy signs. Here's a carved wooden one at the place we stopped for lunch.

These little coastal tourist towns seem to be 75% parking lot. It turns out most of New Hampshire's coastline is rocky and not too great for sunbathing or volleyball, so the tiny portions of beach that are sandy and flat are packed. I wish we'd gotten a picture of the thousands of tourists on the sand, but it looked a lot like this.

I guess hanging out under a sun umbrella is a really New Englandy thing to do. Between Rye and Hampton we drove past a line of seaside houses. In Washington, you have to be pretty loaded to pay for a house right on the water, but these houses surprised me. They were huge, gated, built of imported stone, with croquet lawns, manicured gardens (we even saw a couple of gardeners tending to one), and spacious rooftop decks. Ridiculous!

After a stop for lunch and a bit of backtracking, Ashley and I did find a stretch of uncrowded beach, where the parking was free. I think it was mostly empty because it was covered in rocks and there was no easy access from the road (we had to scramble down a hill of boulders to get to it). It was nice to lie in the sun and get my feet wet in the Atlantic. Next time we head out to the coast I know what to expect.

In other news, Ashley and I tried the lobster rolls, which she loved but were a bit on the mayo-y side for me. We're supposed to get a bed any day now, which is good news because the air mattress doesn't hold air so well any more (sorry Mom and Dad, who we borrowed it from), and we had to sleep on the floor last night. Our backs are killing us. Also I've started getting deeper into the job hunt. Fingers crossed for a nice job teaching composition online!