T Stands for Happy and Sad

 Hi everyone.  

Another week of T has rolled around. My post today is both happy and sad. And also (warning you), pretty long.

You may know the sad news already.  A few weeks back on T Day,  Eileen  of The Artful Crafter told us  she was going in for open heart surgery.  Sadly, she passed from complications due to that surgery. I'll miss her art desk photos with her glass of wine or other drinks that she almost always included in her T Day posts. I will also miss her photos of Mexico where she was living.   Eileen  participated  over  at Art Journal Journey as well as T day. I know she expected to be back to join more challenges. 

I received this ATC from Eileen back in 2018 for T day's anniversary party. I thought I would share it again in her memory.

RIP Eileen.

I had some celebration baking scheduled for this week, but it seemed a bit too fun after writing about a loss. I thought about whether I should end this post here, or whether I should include something else. 

I am a happy person by nature, and when I get sad,  I am just one of those people who plows onward.

This week for T I will share photos from another road trip. Hope you don't mind as I've done that a lot lately.

Last week was my birthday. Since I was going to have the day to myself   (the hubby had to work), I decided I would  go do something . Right now New Hampshire is in the early spring  mud, icy patches  and still  snow covered state  called called mud season. That meant I needed to find something to do that was not outside. 

I like to visit the King Arthur Baking Company Store in Norwich, Vermont, but with covid and the 2 hour trip each way, I hadn't been there since the summer of 2019. Even though visiting would mean a bit of driving, the change of scenery would be great, and Vermont is pretty covid strict. 

In fact, I was a little worried that the store wouldn't even be open. (Looking on the internet proved it was in fact open with some strict protocols.) 

 I decided to head out early, so I set the alarm. I got up just as the hubby was getting ready to leave for work. It was a bit strange  that he looked a little too casual, but in my morning grogginess I didn't think too much about it.

"Do you want your first birthday present now?" He asked me right after I had rolled out of bed.

I know I looked at him utterly confused. He's a jokester, and I was expecting a silly comment. Plus I wasn't quite 100% with it yet.

"I'm coming with you today. I've taken the day off so I can spend your birthday with you."

That was a really nice surprise and birthday gift. Let me take you on our adventure.

We had watched a show about donuts a couple of weeks earlier. At that time I had said how I hadn't had a donut in well over a year. Our first stop was at a local grocery chain that makes donuts we like, and he ran in (he's all vaccinated plus done his 2 weeks) and got us some donuts. He got way more than we needed, but smart man that he is,  figured I would want a choice.

It was a beautiful day as you can see. Then we arrived at King Arthur, which is actually only about 2-3 miles over the New Hampshire border into Vermont.

Those feet on the right are the women's who took your temperature to let you inside.  There was a 30 person limit inside. It felt OK.

I managed to pick up some baking supplies I needed. I have occasionally ordered from them in the past 2 years, but it seemed whenever I did order, there was always something I wanted that was out of stock. No problems with that in the store.

After I finished shopping, we decided to take a little drive and check out a few of the covered bridges in the area. One I had never seen but wanted to was the Cornish-Windsor Bridge. It spans the Connecticut River which divides New Hampshire and Vermont. It wasn't much of a drive to get there from King Arthur either.

We entered on the Vermont side and drove back to New Hampshire through the bridge.

The hubby took the photos since I was driving. 

The Cornish-Windsor Bridge is the longest covered bridge in the US and the longest 2 span covered bridge in the world. 

It is also still in use as a way to cross the river.

In this next photo you can see the hubby enjoyed his day off when I stopped to take a photo of the bridge.

We were going to visit one other covered bridge, but the road in to it was fully involved in mud-season. I turned right around and decided I'd check that one out some other time. There were a few others we could have driven to find, but it was now lunch time, and we were hungry. I had decided what I wanted for my birthday lunch, and that included a bit of driving to get there.

We drove part way back home and stopped in Concord, New Hampshire for lunch. One of the local coastal seafood places had opened a restaurant in Concord, and that's where I wanted to eat. We ordered over the phone, and they brought our lunch out to us in the car. 

I ordered one of my favorite sandwiches, even if it wasn't yet summer. Some of you can probably guess what this was without me showing you.

And if you could hear me, I would say this in my local, dry, and  even a little sarcastic tone, "I'm just supporting local seacoast lobstermen." Smile.

Funny it was on a hamburger roll not in a hotdog roll. 

The scenery overlooked the parking lot. Not exciting but the sandwich and chips  tasted yummy.

It might have taken me forever to get here, but finally,  my T day drink.  Don't forget to stop by  Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog    for this week's drink related post.

My birthday present to myself to remember my fun birthday. It's filled with some of Trader Joe's Spiced chai tea latte mix.

Thanks so much for visiting and reading all the way through this post. Happy T day.

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