Robot Claw

We headed south to Laconia today and on the way – specifically at a tiny and somewhat dilapidated gas station on Route 3 – we found this:

In 1961, very near this gas station, an American married couple named Betty and Barney Hill claimed to have interacted with aliens. Their story is a bizarre one that has never been fully explained, and inside this gas station is a memorial (of sorts) to the curious incident.

The walls of the gas station shop are covered with printouts and clippings like the examples shown above, mostly but not all about the Hill encounter. It’s a bizarre display since most of the are mounted so high up as to be unreadable, or so faded by time they are illegible. From what I have read these were created by enthusiasts years ago, and the memorial has somewhat fallen into disrepair in the decades since.

This is quintessential ‘weird tourism’ and I’m glad we stopped for a look (and bought gas!) because to be honest I’m not sure how many more years it’ll exist. As for the Hills… maybe that’s a story for another blog post one day.

Our destination today was a place we’ve been many times before: the mega-arcade Funspot. It was brutally hot today, and we were looking forward to many hours in air conditioning playing games.

And so we did! I was particularly interested in pinball today, especially the newer tables that have seen a resurgence in popularity this last decade or so. Funspot continues to increase their pinball collection and there’s about 50 now including a dozen or more from the last few years, all of which I played.

The new machines are computer controlled, and have all sorts of elements – screens, moving magnets, ramps or tunnels that change position or shape – that weren’t possible with the technology of a few decades ago. They play fundamentally the same as pinballs from yesteryear but are much more complex and dynamic and – I’ll admit – difficult! Ultimately they’re fun though, and if you haven’t tried a recent table from a company like Stern I recommend you do.

As fancy as the new tables are this doesn’t mean the old ones are forgotten! Funspot still has dozens kept in great shape that are fun to play. But I can’t deny they feel a little… simple after playing the newer ones.

They’ve got a lot of loaner tables as well, as well as a pinball club and league that meets weekly and has regular competitions. I’m not very good at pinball, but I think with practice I could be ok, and if I lived closer their club would be very attractive.

Of course I played a lot of video games as well, including the unusual Us vs Them laserdisc game which I don’t recall ever seeing before. It’s not a great game, but it’s apparently very rare with fewer than 20 known working cabinets. I believe this is the only laserdisc game at Funspot right now and at 41 years old I’m amazed it still works!

That’s some weirdo contorting himself while playing Track & Field. Moving on…

No visit to Funspot is complete without the ticket redemption machines, and we probably spent half our time there playing these guys. As I had before, I ended up doing best at these retro spinning wheel machines and walked away with a truly monstrous string of tickets:

In total we ended up with over 3000 tickets, which was enough to redeem for a yo-yo and about $5 worth of candy! Not bad for $80 😉

We spent almost five hours at Funspot and it was great. It’s always great, and I don’t doubt we’ll return again one day. If you’re ever in this area, it’s worth going out of your way to visit.

Our roadtrip ends in a plain but comfy hotel in Laconia, with the drive home awaiting us tomorrow. We’ve got nothing planned for the trip back, but who knows what the road will bring us?

On the way to today’s destination, we stopped at a shop called Chutters which claims to have the longest candy counter in the world!

That photo isn’t even the entire selection, which ran down an entire wall of the store. Hundreds of different lollies were available, and naturally we invested in a few. They had all sorts of other candies also, as well as souvenirs, and to be honest the store was worth a better look if not for the fact we had somewhere we needed to be.

Mount Washington, at 6288 feet, is the tallest mountain in the northeastern USA. In 1869 the world’s first cog railway was built to ascend the mountain (for tourism reasons!) and it operates to this day. Today, we rode it to the top.

The carriages are pushed by a locomotive and ascend slowly (about 5 miles an hour) up a 25-35% grade (the second steepest in the world) along 3 miles of track to the top. The peak is about 4000 feet above the base station and the trip to the top takes about 45 minutes.

Of course the views are lovely, especially north of the track where at one point the mountain falls off almost 2000 feet. At the start the train passes through pine forests but shortly the trees are replaced by scrub and eventually – around 5000 feet above the tree line – just rocks and lichens.

I took that photo from the large visitors center at the mountain top, which has gift stores, a cafe and a few other facilities. You can see one of the trains in the photo as it approaches the station at the top. Several of the adjacent mountain peaks are visible in the distance.

Aside from the train, you can drive or hike to the top. Hiking is popular but challenging and sadly many (over 170) have died on the slope in the last 150 years. The top of Mount Washington is known for unpredictable and at times life-threatening weather but we got lucky and today experienced clear skies and lovely weather.

There’s a post office at the peak which apparently – although I’m not positive – has a unique postmark. I sent a few cards to check, so if you get one have a look 🙂

The round trip is about three hours, including one at the top. The trip down is even more spectacular than up since all the views are breathtaking. I found it quite relaxing and maybe even had a micronap or two 😉

Afterwards we checked into our hotel – the Mount Washington Hotel (now called Omni) – which has been here almost 125 years! It’s absolutely not the inspiration for the hotel in Steven King’s novel The Shining, but regardless has its own ghost named Caroline who is ‘often’ seen sitting on the bed in room 314.

As a historic and very expensive hotel with valet parking, it’s of course too fancy for proletariat like us, so I felt right at home loafing in the room enjoying fine food:

Or partaking of the facilities in the basement:

It’s been a while since I played pinball. It made me want to play them more…

Today we drove up to the Ben & Jerry’s factory in northern Vermont for a factory tour. Photography was forbidden, but we got a good view of the factory from above and saw ice cream being made and packaged. Obviously many of the machines are automated now, and it was cool watching the process.

The sample flavour we got to try was ‘Half Baked’ which is a mix of chocolate ice cream and brownie. I didn’t try it (of course) but I had a sample of mango which was delicious.

They have three factories worldwide (two in Vermont and one in The Netherlands) and while they have 80+ flavours only seven are made in this location, to the tune of 400,000 pints a day. Amazingly enough they ship ice cream worldwide including to Australia! If you’re in Oz and get some Ben & Jerry’s from the supermarket it may have been made here.

Outside they have a comedic ‘graveyard’ of retired or failed flavours including the three very short-lived ones above. The biggest failure they ever made was ‘sugar plum’, which sold only a single pint in the first three weeks it was on sale! Apparently the popcorn ice cream was delicious, but suffered from the popcorn getting soggy too quickly 🙂

The drive was lovely, through the mountains and past ski slopes of northern Vermont. We half expected this part of Vermont to be quiet this time of year but it’s the exact opposite, with lots of people out enjoying the sun and the views.

We’re staying in an interesting motel with a bowling alley and mini golf course, and our room has a loft! A relaxing place to write a few postcards and watch trash on tv…

A weird thing we noticed today was the presence of Jaws merchandise in a few shops we stopped at, including T-shirts, stickers and even the above Vermont scratchie! There’s no link between Vermont (a landlocked state) and Jaws so we can’t really explain this.