Huh — no kidding! I didn’t know the place you guys had stayed with Erin’s family was so close. Can’t remember when you were there… would’ve been fun to have hooked up with you if the timing were right!

Note that I’m not even going to ask why Jeff was looking in NH for a cast iron sink for a house in Texas. He had his reasons, no doubt. 🤩

tt was the last day of our stay, Friday, and we checked out of the Holiday Inn and loaded the car back up. In other words, it was the next-to-last day of the season, just as the town’s temporary population approached maximum. We figured as long as we waited to go downtown until sometime after that day’s started, it might not be quite so crowded.

Well, it really wasn’t as crowded as it might have been. But it was still plenty crowded; in fact, we couldn’t find a parking place. We circled around and around, slooowly… Suddenly right there on the main street we could see a group of people approaching a car parked in a perfect spot — with an empty space in front of it, even! I put on the blinker and waited to pull in when they left, which they did in short order. We couldn’t believe our luck — “luck” being something we hadn’t experienced a lot of so far on the trip. I pulled into the space, even moved up into the space ahead to leave room for someone behind us. Our mood lifted immediately; we had a wonderful lunch, bought the trekking equipment I mentioned, and returned to the car.

…which had a parking ticket under the windshield wiper.

Yes: we’d parked in a loading zone. It was even marked as such. We’d apparently been blinded by premature luck.

Still, though, we were so elated that we laughed about it all the way to our next stop. When arrived, I immediately got online to the Saratoga Springs PD Web site to pay the parking fine — $45. I didn’t want to push our new “luck” that far!