A Moose!

I've been going up to my family's home in Bethlehem, NH ever since I was born. My grandmother grew up there and we spent summers and winters there. Moving around a lot, it was really the only place I could truly call 'Home.' And every summer for the past 20 years we would leave at dusk and go on moose hunts. My cousin Matt and I would sit in the back of a station wagon surveying the roads we left as everyone else, usually a packed car, looked ahead. All angles were covered. We hit every marshy area or moose damp we could find. Once we saw some bear, some deer, foxes, and all that crap. But never a moose!

I drove up to the house from Concord, about 80 miles give or take, for the night. On my way up, spotted two black bears on the side of a ski slope. I spent today driving around the back mountain roads up to Mount Washington, in the back of my head thinking maybe I'd see a moose. It was always wishful thinking as I'd slow down past rivers and swamp areas. On my way back to Concord this evening, I again spotted the two black bears on a different ski slope and pulled into the parking lot at Cannon Mountain, the ski area about 5-10 minutes from the house. They were pretty close to the bottom of the slope so I decided to drive closer. After about 10-15 minutes I gave up and started backing my car down a access road when I saw the moose in the parking lot. I thought it was a horse and was wondering what the hell a horse was doing in the parking lot. Then it dawned on me and I nearly peed myself out of excitement. I waited, then watched, then followed, then took a gamble and parked my car and stayed still at this boat launch, hoping Bullwinkle would waltz by.