@drewsview.xyz Breakneck Ridge Hike near Cold Spring, New York #hudsonriver #breakneckridge #westpointacademy #hike #catskills #coldspring #bearmountain
♬ Higher Power – Coldplay
Destination: Walpole
The longer I have lived in New Jersey, by far the most densely populated state, the more I have appreciated under-the-radar destinations over crowded Instagram hot spots.
In a region with destinations like Acadia, Provincetown, and Newport, it’s easy for plenty of fantastic places to get drowned out by the big players. I’d even argue that the whole state of New Hampshire is the unsung hero of New England. The reality is that Americans in other parts of the country have trouble pointing to NH on a map. “Oh it’s one of those little states up there”, they say.
Walpole, NH, population 3,734, fits the bill of the path less traveled even for New Hampshire. You could probably count all of the shops in the center of town on one hand. However, the crown jewel of Walpole is the flagship location of L.A. Burdick Chocolate, home of the best hot chocolate in the entire world. Burdick’s annex locations in Manhattan’s trendy SoHo and Boston’s Back Bay have become famed cafés.
Every summer as a teenager, I would make a point to drive my grandmother down to Burdick’s in Walpole for lunch. The restaurant is home to some of the best Franco-Swiss food for miles. In a state where the largest ethnic group is French/French Canadian, it is deceivingly hard to find many French dining options, but Burdick’s will not disappoint. My drink of choice is the dark hot chocolate, which can also be served iced, perfect for Burdick’s Bastille Day lunch on a hot July day. The croque-madame, an open-faced French grilled cheese and fried egg sandwich, has gone on and off the menu through the years and is one of my favorites.
After the pursuing the two other stores in town, a trip to Walpole is not complete without a scenic drive around the hillside farmland, which provides excellent views of the Connecticut River Valley. Great stopping points include: Alysons Orchard and Walpole Valley Farms.
Lake Sunapee kite skiing
Lake Sunapee is frozen solid every winter and is a destination for kite skiers 🪁 🎿
Destination: Amish Country
Took a quick trip out to Amish country this past weekend. I had to keep reminding myself that they weren’t paid actors.
- Amish Village – It’s like a visitor center, and I didn’t do the bus tour. Learned quite a bit from the short house tour. I didn’t realize that Amish were OK with electricity for certain off grid uses, such as LED headlamps.
- Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania – Very nicely preserved trains from the early steam era up through the diesel era. There is a replica of the first American steam locomotive
- Strasburg Railroad – oldest continually operated rail line. Very pretty views of Amish Farms (photo above)
- Town of Strasburg
- Town of Intercourse – pedestrian village area (closed Sundays)
Everything Amish-related is closed on Sundays, including the town of Intercourse, however it’s great to drive around on Sunday because the Amish were walking around enjoying their day of rest. Don’t bother driving through the city of Lancaster, stay in the countryside.
Interactive population graphic
Click here to view the interactive version of the graphic!
I could stare at maps for hours. I don’t think there is anything more elegant that conveys more information than a map. I’ve long had a fascination for geography and cartography.
This was originally inspired by Reddit’s r/peopleliveincities, which contains maps intended to show certain statistics, but in reality just show that those stats are associated with high population densities.
On a technical note, I used a very cool Python library called Streamlit to make the map interactive and host the widget. It’s amazing to me that in 2021 it’s possible to make a simple web app with less than 50 lines of code. This widget and graphic also heavily leverages a shapefile generated by NHGRANIT, New Hampshire’s GIS clearinghouse. In theory, maps like this could be generated with any state, but most states only publish data on a county-level. Kudos to NHGRANIT for publishing a shapefile that works well out of the box with Geopandas.
Winter in New England
This was my first video to feature a plane. The preview image shows the scene where my father and I were flying the family plane, which we refer to as “The Demon”, around the Bretton Woods side of Mount Washington in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Mount Washington is most prominent mountain on the East Coast, even more topographically prominent than nearly all mountains in Colorado, including Pikes Peak.
As I’ve gotten more comfortable with my drone, I’ve gotten better at capturing scenes with the drone far away from where I’m standing with the controller. (With visual observers, of course, in case the FAA is reading my blog). The scene with the kite ski was filmed while I’ll sat comfortably in my porch. The lighthouse scene in Portsmouth, NH was filmed all the way across the harbor in New Castle at Fort Stark.
In addition to being a drone pilot, I’m also a private pilot, so I’ll be sure to feature more aviation content as time goes on. I’ll also go into more depth on the technical aspects of my drone in future posts.
First post
The original intent when I got this domain was to have a companion site for my drone videos and landscape photos. And although I intend to feature more artistic and travel posts, this blog will be a potpourri of my thoughts, including technical articles and maybe some (light?) social commentary. As they say, if your grandmother wouldn’t approve of it, you probably shouldn’t post it on the internet, so I’ll tread lightly. Though I may share some of the mass emails my grandmother sends me frequently, most of which probably shouldn’t be re-posted on the open internet.
Keeping with the kitchen-sink, anything-goes format, posts will vary in length and subject, so I’ll attempt to categorize posts so that you can skip around.
I don’t intend for this site to get many viewers and I see this as an internet home for the highlights of my internal monologue.