[Thundra]

I had completed my first trip, on boat, to the lake a few Monday's ago. It was the Monday after the first heat-wave that had come for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I was with a friend that had spent the past 15 years on the lake up there as his elderly mother was, and had come down with alzheimers and he would take her, a dog and himself and enjoy riding all around and had learned the ins and outs of everywhere up there so it was nice having him as my guide.


As I had mentioned in another post, between having taken the boat-ed NH course-and having a C-MAP chip that is licensed from Bizer, the C-MAP was really spot-on for all the buoy locations.

The lake is calm. While it was a Monday in June-I know better than to go on a weekend as I have learned as I get older and older, to not go on the weekend when one can go on weekdays(what vacation time is good for), we can leave the weekends to the amateurs. I love that the lake is calm with not much current and no tide to worry about, ever.

The big town harbors have public docks and at least at Wolfeboro where we had lunch, and Weirs, one did not even need to pay to tie up and use the dock. When I finally saw the Weirs public docks I was in awe at how many there were and not one was taken/used. It was a Monday at around 5:30pm or so but my buddy did mention that no matter what, during the week, there is always a spot for a boat at those docks. I'm used to going places where there are virtually NO public docks, either paid or unpaid so to see them all was heartening. I can also understand that coastal property is so expensive and maintaining tidal docks in the winter is just costly but it is just nice knowing that boaters really are welcomed with open arms on the lake.

The water is clear, maybe not as clear as days gone by, but clearer than the salt waters I've been used to. The water also has about no taste and just feels so good to swim in. My 8 and 10 year olds were loving floating and swimming around, so much so that they are looking forward to going up again-very soon. The water also happened to be a great temp, of course this was like June 23rd or whatever that Monday was after a heat wave but that the water is not like ice as it is in Maine or even Hampton Beach, it makes swimming just awesome.

I now know why so many go to the big lake all these years. The mountains all around. Solitude by water if one wants it, then civilization with food and lodging for us boaters, I'm hooked and am all in for this upcoming season.

For two or three straight summers, a lad sometime in the 80's, I had stayed for weeks at a time at the YMCA boys camp on Bear Island. I had vaguely remembered what the pier for the Mt Washington ferry had looked like but I do remember, every night, trying to catch the fish off the docks at the camp where the water was so incredibly clear, I could see every fish in the water and trying in vain to try and catch one. Other than having snowmobiled on the lake a few times in the early winters of the 2000's, we'd get on somewhere around Wolfeboro, ride out to the Broads and then go back, I had never spent any time or had visited the lake or any of the towns surrounding it. I really look forward to docking in Weirs and checking out that boardwalk as I do love visiting places by boat more than by motor vehicle.