First Road Friends

We've met a lot of great people on the road, very nice reporters, friendly campground owners, other happy tourists. But it was in New Hampshire where we met our first real "Road Friends." We'd been traveling for about 10 days when we arrived. It was to be the longest overnight stop since we started out. When we pulled into the Gunstock RV and Ski Resort near Laconia, NH it was like our navigation device always says, "You have reached your destination." Up to that point in the trip we were pushing forward each day, logging more and more miles.

We got registered and prepared to set up camp on Fir Lane for three whole nights. One of the first things we noticed about this campground was the number of NASCAR fans there seemed to be camping there. Dan and I don't follow racing so we started to wonder if we would have anything in common with our fellow campers. We don't have anything against NASCAR, it's just not our thing. We wondered if the other campers would question why we weren't waving our driver's flag and we wondered if anyone would talk to us. Our questions were immediately answered by our new camping neighbor Joe, a car-loving mechanic, who had come to Gunstock for a long weekend with his family. He quickly informed us that everyone was here to go to a race on Sunday at the nearby New Hampshire Motor Speedway. We had no idea.

Over the course of the next three evenings, Joe, his girlfriend Linda, her mother Barbara and Linda's grown children Roxanne and Craig shared their campfire with us late into the evening. We laughed and told stories. We sought out our common interests in hobbies and jobs. And poked fun at our differences in language and dialect. Dan and I never should have doubted that we'd fit in with this group. They are people just like us.

When we came back from a daytrip on Saturday afternoon, even our camper fit right in with the rest of them on the row. That's because our new road friends bought us a racing flag and hung it on our camper. They signed it too and asked us to have the other people we meet along the way sign our flag.

People told me before I left on this trip that I'd get to see a lot of really inspirational things. This was one of them.