For The Health of Your Soul

Carol and I watch Chronicle.

They highlight a lot of great NH restaurants and places to go.

During the height of Covid, Carol kept a notebook at hand and wrote down the names and locations of about 966 places that interested us. Mostly restaurants. They fall into two general categories - places we want to visit with Keith and Craig, places we want to visit to pamper ourselves.

We crossed one off the list yesterday. One of the "pamper ourselves" ones.

Parker's Maple Barn in Mason, NH. It's a breakfast joint.

Mason is 3,000 miles from Henniker but we were up for an adventure. Turned out to be more of an adventure than we bargained for.

It was one of those deals when you wonder what the fuck GPS is thinking. When we got close to Mason we ended up bouncing down dirt roads. Miles and miles of dirt roads. 25 mph. Of course we had no idea where we were, so we didn't know what alternatives we had. So we motored on. Passed people along the way, out on their lawns, who looked at us as if to say "What the fuck are you doing on this road?"

Trip took 1 hour and 10 minutes. 

This restaurant is in the middle of nowhere. Literally. There is nothing else around it. No other restaurants, no businesses, no houses - nothing but trees. We get out of the car and see lots of people all around, and lots of cars in the parking lot.

Walk into the restaurant and are told there is a 1 hour and 15 minute wait.

Normally in a situation like that I turn around and walk out. But we had just crossed the Sahara desert and had nowhere else to go. So I decided to go with the flow.

Of course they have a gift shop, so we killed some time in there buying shit we don't really need. Although I did get a set of coasters with colorful skull designs on them, so it wasn't a total loss.

Finally got seated in the restaurant and had an exceptional breakfast, around 1:00 in the afternoon. Sitting at a table by a window, enjoying the view, enjoying each other's company. On the ride back we were wiser, so we set GPS but ignored it when it wanted to torture us with a return trip on the dirt roads. It self-corrected and kept us on pavement, making for a much easier ride.

The ride back was beautiful. Real deep country, wide open spaces, peaceful, serene, the kind of place you want to retire to for the health of your soul. We admired it and engaged in easy conversation.

My point is that years ago a situation like that would have sent me into a murderous rage. An hour and 10 minute drive down the back roads of Morocco? An hour and 15 minute wait to be seated? Are you fucking kidding me?

Instead, I decided to go with the flow and we had a very nice day. And an exceptional breakfast.

Left the house at 10:30, got home at 3:00.

It was a very nice way to kick off a very nice day.