New Hampshire

Kris' sister's name is Pat and she is married to Bob; their daughter's name is Kari. And Kari is a senior at the University of New Hampshire and, when we visit her, we like to stay at Hickory Pond Inn. Those are the facts. Here's the story:

Of the four years Kari has been at UNH, Kris and I have tried to go out (with Pat and Bob) to visit her and the area at Fall Break -- we made it three times. On the first day of our visit this year, it rained, but we managed to visit a few places, including Salem, where we spied the statue to Hawthorne -- and now I want to read The Scarlet Letter again:

Kari is now dating a young man named Jonathan Williams, who was a star football player last year at UNH and is now coaching at Hamilton College in New York.

This weekend his team played Colby College up in Maine, so we all drove up to Colby College to see the Hamilton team beat the Colby team 6-0. We met up with a friend from Freeport (IL) and her husband, Linda and George Roth. (They live at Orchard Beak, ME.) It was great to see them -- and we had a wonderful dinner together at Yellowfin's and then some homemade apple pie later at their home -- during the Cards-Tigers game. Back to Colby's football game with Hamilton. Here's a picture from the game:

I must state that Colby's central building, on the top of what is called Mayflower Hill, is the library. Check it out:

Something about the visit to Colby created in us a need to visit academic institutions while we were there. So, we visited Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.

Then we just had to visit Phillips Exeter Academy down in Exeter, Mass -- which was the setting for The Dead Poets Society. We walked around that campus -- saw some pretty fancy frisbee tossing.

Bob, Kari, and Pat. Thanks Kari for all the fun!

PS: On the plane coming home we had some notables on the flight: Martin Marty (church historian; he debated Richard Dawkins in Cambden, Maine) and Rex Grossman (Bears QB).