My Trip to NH

This happened to be one of those weekends where C and I actually went somewhere, and that somewhere was Fitzwilliam, NH. His mother and her boyfriend rented a cabin at Laurel Lake.
The ride down was great- very humid unfortunately, but with the windows down there was a slight breeze to offset the bright sun. Now, when we first came upon the cabin, we had slight reservations about the structural integrity of the thing. But once inside, there was a nice sized kitchen and living room, with sliders out to the back yard and lake. Then upstairs there were three bedrooms, which basically took up most of the space except for a narrow hallway that led to the bathroom. But the downstairs was very open and it was a gorgeous day, so we had dinner with all the windows open and the sound of waves lapping up against the shore. It was lovely.
After dinner, C and his mom played Scrabble while we all watched Missing in America (his mom rented it). Good movie but depressing as hell! The rest of the night C and I watched TV and hung out in the back yard, enjoying the cool night air. We ended up driving home that night, since the beds were kind of small and it was pretty stuffy in the bedrooms. We have a king size bed, and it really is difficult to beat sleeping in that much comfort! :)
Anyway, we returned the next day, driving through a thunderstorm as we hit the NH border. But when we got to the cabin the rain had subsided, so we decided to go to the other side of the lake to visit two cabins that are owned by C's relatives. We met his mother's aunt and then jumped into the lake to go swimming (to try and get some in before the distant thunder reached us). The water was cold at first, but felt wonderful after a while, and I hung out on a floating dock while C, his brother, and their mom swam out to a rock grouping that you can stand on further out into the lake. I'm not the strongest swimmer, so floating in the sun was plenty fun for me!
Once I returned to the shore his mother's aunt asked if I wanted to go kayaking. I've only done it once before so I agreed. We went out in two small kayaks and rowed all along the shoreline, looking for painted turtles that sometimes sun themselves on smaller rocks down at the other end of the lake. We didn't see any, but we did see a beautiful loon diving in and out a short ways from us. We rowed closer, and the loon didn't even flinch. I imagine it's used to a large number of people hanging out in the lake on a regular basis.
After playing around in the lake for a couple of hours we stopped to get ice cream at the Depot General Store, which is one of those cute local businesses that has everything from convenience store items to movie rentals. We then went back to the cabin to change so we could go to a chinese restaurant called Typhoon Asia. As we got to the car the skies opened up and it started raining, lightly at first but growing in intensity the closer we got to the restaurant. But the food was delicious so it was totally worth the trip.
When we got back to the cabin we relaxed for a bit, working on a crossword puzzle together. But the rumble of thunder never truly went away, and pretty soon the entire sky was lit up, like someone had turned on the overhead light for the lake. We eventually had to close the sliding door because it became so windy the rain was blowing in on us sitting on the couch! The rumbling turned to booming claps and long drawn out thunder that echoed the length of the lake, so we decided to wait it out before returning home. We saw a small radar map on one of the channels that sort of came in on the TV, and it looked like the cluster of storms had passed. There was some yellow and orange spots south of us, but we didn't think we would hit too much of it.
Boy, were we wrong.
Three quarters of the trip I had my windshield wipers on high, and as we got closer to Worcester the storms got stronger. C could hardly hear himself talk over the pelting rain, and the lightning flashes were practically blinding. My knuckles were almost white (and I'm extremely pale to begin with so that's quite a feat!) by the time we pulled into the driveway. We were pretty much the GPS system for the storm, leading it right to our apartment where it ended about 10 minutes after we got home. It was just friggin fantastic.
But, as a whole, the weekend was a lot of fun, and it was a different place for a different experience. I haven't been out in a lake in a long, long time- it felt like summer camp! Hopefully there will be enough nice weekends throughout the rest of the summer where it won't be our last enjoyable outdoor activity.