The Lake and the Shore

The distance between our favorite seashore vacation haunt, Cape May, New Jersey, and our favorite freshwater retreat, Lake Winnipesaukee, in mid-central New Hampshire, is about 550 road miles.

However, that difference reflects more than merely geographic distance. The Lakes Region of N.H., about an hour south of the White Mountains National Forest, offers not only recreation and dining: Its relative vastness and isolation forces a person to stop and to seep in the deep, elemental forces of nature. You won’t get elbowed out by anyone else here.

Any person who is active and fit can easily be challenged and rewarded by trekking up mountain trails towards peaks ranging in height to over 6000 feet. Big, ornery ones, like Mount Washington which creates its own weather patterns that can turn from sunny to dangerously nasty in a couple of minutes, are best left to professional climbers.

There are plenty of smaller mountains, like Mt. Major at Winnipesaukee’s southern end, which attract thousands of day climbers, including families and camping groups, each year.

The only traffic problem you’ll have around here occurs on a rainy day, for example, when the light at the four corners on Route 25, in the center of Meredith, causes cars to back up for a couple of miles, as house-bound vacationers seek diversion for themselves and their kids at nearby amusement centers and shopping emporiums.