Old Trucks and Butterfly Blessings

Last Saturday, Gryphon and I had occasion to visit Newport, NH. (See my blog entry at Folkcat's Fiber Crafts for why.) To make the trip more interesting, I looked up some geocaches for us to visit on the way back. Both of them happened to be in Hillsborough, NH.



Mr. Kemp's Trucks, All in a Row

The first one we visited was called Kemp's Collection. In 1954, Mr. Kemp began collecting antique trucks and parking them next to the family's automotive garage - which they've owned since the late 1800's. There are over 100 trucks, ranging from fire trucks to snow plows, dump trucks, tank trucks, and ice cream trucks, all parked cheek to cheek and nose to rump in the lot.

Visiting the collection is free to the public - they just ask that kids not be present without adult supervision. This makes complete sense, since these trucks are seeing the ravages of time - which in some cases means rusty, sharp edges. Plus, I imagine that the trucks are too much of a temptation for kids who like climbing.

With proper supervision, though, this would be a great cache to visit with children. They'll love seeing the old vehicles, and Mom & Dad can explain about how they're different from the cars and trucks of today. Oh, and if you have any fans of the children's book, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, be sure to have them on the lookout for a familiar profile in the ranks!


Gryphon Studied the Trucks Closely

As if all this historical interest wasn't already enough, Gryphon and I had the chance to chat with a gentleman we presume to be the current Mr. Kemp, who was working in the garage when we visited. He told us about the significance of a pile of stones we had noticed by the river bank to one side of the trucks. It seems that, back when Franklin Pierce was inaugurated, there was a celebration held in New Hampshire, and it took place right there at the site of the Kemp collection. The pile of stones was the fire pit in which an oxen roasted for three days to feed the crowd! If you look closely at the picture above, you can just see the corner of the stone fire pit at the right hand side.

The second geocache we visited was only a short distance away. The Contoocook River Trail Cache is on a walking trail along, obviously, the Contoocook River. We endured bouts of pouring rain as we went into this one, but they were always short and interspersed with bright sunshine. Our GPS unit flip-flopped its compass orientation a couple times, but we found this traditional cache readily.


Gryphon is Clearly Enjoying the Day

If it hadn't been for the rain, we might have walked further just to enjoy the woods and river. Even so, we had plenty of opportunity to see some wild ducks quacking loudly on the water, and I had a brief encounter with a gorgeously colored butterfly that I later identified as a Red-Spotted Purple. It even gave me a butterfly blessing by landing on my shoe long enough for me to snap its portrait.



A Local Native Welcomes Me

The end result of the day was generally satisfying. These were the caches we've done that are most distant from our home base in Wilton, NH. We got to see some incredibly interesting things that we would never even have known existed. And we got to have great interactions with the natives, both human and otherwise.

Happy Trails!