I work with at-risk teenage boys at a residential treatment center in the suburbs of Boston. Most of our kids fit your description, though some of them are from suburban and rural areas themselves. One fine cobalt-blue-sky, July, Saturday morning a few years ago, I piled all the "on level" (meaning well behaved) kids into a van along with our picnic stuff and did the 2 hour drive to the lake. Most of them had never been to New Hampshire, never mind Winnipesaukee. They were all excited to be going, anticipating this "big lake" that I was talking so much about, being so much better than some of the local ponds we usually go to. (I guess they ignored the fact that we often went to some nice ocean beaches such as Horse Neck in SE Mass.) I set my sights on Ellacoya State Park.
Anyhow, as the kids are finally getting tired of the near 2 hour trip, one asks me if we're there yet, just as we're cresting the last hill top on the Laconia bypass. Their glimpse of that million dollar view of the lake quieted them down real fast right there.
A bit later on, they're taking in all the sights of the lake from the beach at Ellacoya as I say, while one of them wanders over and looks at a navigation map of the lake the state park staff had posted on an information board. He asks where we are on the map and I point out Ellacoya. Then he looks through the trees, over the beach, towards Welch Island, and then back at the map, and he realizes what he sees beyond the beach is only a fraction of the true lake. His jaw kind of drops as he quietly, and a bit reverently says "Wow! This is a BIG lake", again, looking out over the water.
A bit later in the day, after our BBQ, we climbed Mt. Major so they could see most of the rest of the lake. It was Mt. Washington clear that afternoon too, if memory serves.
That was three summers ago and since then, all of those kids have graduated and left our school.
Oh, and by the way - the kid that was so amazed that day, comparing the map view of the lake to the real thing - he eventually moved to Littleton ----- New Hampshire. And myself? I'm still stuck in MA. Go figure
