Wolf Man and the bears.

We planned a boy's day out. Nick and I wanted to visit the White Mountains National Forest but we needed to find a point of interest for Dan.

My old college friend, Tim Whiteford lives in Vermont but was over in New Hampshire on vacation last week. He posted a picture of "The Wolf Man" at Clark's Trading Post and I thought, "We don't see a lot of those in Cambridge". Our son Dan would love to see him, at a safe distance anyway.

I Googled the Trading Post and discovered that they also feature a bear circus. This sounded a bit too red-neck for me and so we decided to give the place a miss. I don't like animals in cages and we have had bad experiences at the circus too. Just down the road in Lincoln there is a Hobo Train Ride, so we opted to go there instead.



The town of Lincoln features a half-mile row of shops and cafes and skiing on Loon Mountain.  On a good day you can eat Italian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Mexican, Jewish or pancakes, but most of them were shut. We caught a waitress leaving the Pancake House and followed her to the Mexican Grill. We think that all of the cafes are run by the same people and they don't have enough family members to open them all at once. It's an interesting business model.

This is shoulder season at the ski resorts. There won't be any snow for months yet but the summer walkers and mountain bikers are mostly gone by Labour Day. The schools started back this week which explains the shortage of waitresses. These places get a bit of a boost when the leaf-peepers come in the fall but I suppose Christmas is the time to be there if you want a choice of meals.

The Hobo Train wasn't hard to find, but they had already packed up for the day when we arrived at 1.30. What to do? ............You guessed it. It doesn't hurt to look.

Clark's Trading Post turned out to be a real treat for all three of us. First of all it has a real steam-train ride through the forest, along-side a pebbly mountain stream. The wood-fired, old logging engine is a beauty and the track even incorporates and old wooden covered bridge. We clambered aboard and Dan was simply delighted as we clanked, whistled, huffed and puffed our way up-hill. That's when we first caught a glimpse of the Wolf Man.

It seems that this ranting and raving hermit was once a normal person like you and I, but he took to mining and thought he was onto a rich seam of minerals. Obviously, he went stark-staring mad, but his ramblings made some kind of sense at times. He accused us of ruining the wilderness, disrespecting women and many other things but his objective was to scare us away from his mine. To do this he fired shots in the air, used smoke grenades and roared up and down the line in his rust-bucket racer. We went on the ride twice and he obviously works unscripted. The danger in working up a good rant is that you will slip into profanity, but he did not.

The bear circus was much better than I expected too. The Clark Family follows the Lincoln business model and mostly employs members of the extended family. We liked them all and wondered if the Wolf Man was a Clark too. Ma and Pa Clark took over the bear bones (lots of bad bear puns featured in the show) of the the business from their parents using orphaned cubs. We saw two females perform their tricks, illustrating that a bear will do anything for ice-cream. They were charming.

Dan does not normally like animals at all, but he loved the bears.

There is a street of buildings that look like they were rescued from various locations. We popped into a Fire House, Bank (the restrooms), a couple of shops and The House of Mystery. I don't want to spoil it for you by telling you what is inside, but if you really want to know, there's a lot of video on You Tube.

If we are ever in the White Mountains again, we will be back at Clark's Trading Post.