Newton Beach and Plaistow Bar

 The "town lake" is officially named Country Pond.  I'm delighted to discover that it has an island in the middle of it.  (Reminds me of Minnesota!  Thank goodness our elictronic friend Garmina Burana could show us several roads to the lake.  The first one we tried did NOT go to the Town Beach, but eventually, we found a road that did.

  There were actually quite a few people at the beach.  I am still squeamish about lakes and trust the vast open spaces of the ocean more (although Cape Cod has had sharks this week.  No sharks in lakes.)

We actually have the required car sticker now and could go people watching, kayaking or SKETCHING!

 Like many water-oriented communities, the zoning, architecture and construction near the pond was eclectic to say the least.

 One  house had a hen house.  With ducks.  I don't know if they were invasive ducks,  or if they were invited.

 I don't know if this house was on "the island" or just on another cove from where we were parked.

 There was a WOODEN  trestle bridge over these well used train tracks.  Again... we had trains in Texas, but NEVER in treed canyons!

 Several people had asked us if we'd found Rowe's Market.  I assumed it was "Rose" until we stumbled upon it on our way back from the Town Beach.  It is tiny, and may or may not be very clean, but I think it had almost every kind of soft drink and beer known to man kind.  (Except Diet Peach Snapple!)  And they stocked all that odd stuff you want when you are at a beach house:  band-aids, bug spray, inflatable water toys, snack food.  They also said they had subs and pizza for take out or delivery, but I didn't see anyone who looked likely to go to the teeny kitchen in the back.

We veered off to Portsmouth (it was Tuesday and we wanted to see what was new at the bookstore!) and decided to look for someplace to eat on the way home.  We should have looked harder while we were actually IN Portsmouth, or at least Exeter.  So we ended up very close to home when I spied The Dugout Grille which seemed to be doing a big business.  Turns out they were having an American Pool Players Tournament.

The food was typical of bar food (I went for Turkey Pot Pie and in-house made biscuits.)  Some of the entrees sounded suspiciiously pre-made elsewhere.


The decor was a cross between Memphis Kitsch and hardcore New England sports fan.

The crowed seemed fairly diverse... except that everyone was white.  But there were women AND men and people from legal drinking age to well past retirement.

(When I looked them up on line to get their actual name, it turns out there have been at least two stabbings in the parking lot... one embellished by a tire iron. I don't know whether we'll return or not.)

 I asked our server about the light in this woman's cocktail.  She said that people bring their own... I'm still not sure what that means because the server went on to talk about how one of their "girls" sold sex toys at parties.  If you know about brightly colored sex toys that you put in a drink... clue me in.  I was a librarian.  I just like to know stuff.