Fryeburg and North Conway

On Sunday, the weather was quite clear for my trip to Fryeburg, ME to check out the fall foliage. I had plans to fly the canyons in the Presidential Range (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Range). This was another dad-son day adventure.

The flight was very simple 85 NM from Beverly, flying solely on Avare navigation. However, as I got closer to Fryeburg, it became clear to me that due to low ceiling, I will not be visiting the mountains this time.

The approach to Fryeburg was very bumpy, and I had a less than ideal landing due to a small down down draft a few moments before touchdown. Thanks to the very forgiving Skyhawk I did not even feel the hard touchdown.

I was literally greeted by a couple of pilots at Fyreburg, who guided me to a crew car. The Jeep had stick shift which gave me goose bumps at first, but with a little practice around the parking lot brought back the muscle memory from my days of driving a stick shift in Pakistan 14 years ago.

We drove to North Conway, about fifteen miles from Fryeburg airport, where we had a great lunch. There is a train museum in N Conway that Zain was so excited to visit.

I was getting a bit worried with the slowly dropping ceiling, so after a couple of hours in the town, we drove back to Fryeburg airport. On our way back, we were presented with excellent fall colors, and then were awed by a large rainbow in the air. Whenever I see a rainbow, I prepare myself of rain. Rain did arrive after the rainbow vanished, but we navigated fine through it back to Beverly.

Here are a few other pictures from this adventure.

Crew car called Petunia at Fryeburg, ME. It used to be pink, I was told. Stick shift.

Petunia runs fine. Made the difference between a good trip and a great trip.

Crab cakes, pizza.

Engine in N Conway

Zain on an engine. His mouth is stuffed with food that he decided to carry there.

Excellent fall

Zain breaking the law 

"Petunia" crew jeep

Rain after rainbow

Fall is too red

Back at Beverly and yum at Cherry Farm

To Keene Pumpkin Festival

This was the busiest weekend we had in over a year. We had two days, and we used every single hour of them.

We arrived in Keene on Saturday for the Keene Pumpkin Festival. We were awed by the size of this event. http://pumpkinfestival2011.org/Visitors.html

There were a several thousand people packed in one street of a small town. Although, it was crowded, kids had great time playing and posing with different shapes of pumpkins, prepared by the locals. There were 15000 pumpkins in the street, each one representing a different character of its decorator.

There were all kinds of food stalls with candies, meat, corn, and you name it. We ate till we could not move anymore.

The church in central Keene was converted into a haunted house with guided tours of dungeons full of daemons.

Then at five in the evening, all visitors were asked to help in lighting the pumpkins. Our kids lighted a hundred pumpkins before I stopped counting.

I decided to leave half the family at home, and then head to Fryeburg on Sunday with Zain.

This is a video of one of the dances:

These are the pictures from the trip:

Me and my daughter

Too many people

Haunted house

Just out of farm squash

Lighting the pumpkins