The Hippo: June 29, 2017

FEATURED FOOD

Winning Burgers

New Restaurant Challenge Awards Prizes for Eating Burgers

Written By Angie Sykeny (asykeny@hippopress.com)

Images: Courtesy Photo

If you plan on dining out next month, you could be in the running for some tasty prizes — as long as you order a burger.

During the month of July, the Hippo will host the first annual Granite State Burger Challenge. The rules are simple: eat a burger at a participating restaurant, get your burger passport stamped and turn it in for a chance to win.

“The point is to get diners into the restaurants during July, when things are generally slower, and for diners to try burgers from restaurants that they might not have gone to before,” event coordinator Jill Raven said.

Twenty-eight New Hampshire restaurants will participate in the Burger Challenge, and some will feature a special burger for the month. Both special burgers and burgers on the regular menu will qualify for a stamp.

First, pick up a Burger Challenge passport, which can be found as an insert in The Hippo or at any of the participating restaurants, and bring the passport with you when you eat to get it stamped. Each stamp equals one entry for a chance to win the grand prize: 20 $100 gift certificates from participating restaurants of the winner’s choice, totalling $2,000 in gift certificates.

“Obviously that’s the incentive,” Raven said. “You could eat free for a whole entire year, which is incredible.”

Drop off your burger passport at any of the participating restaurants or at the Hippo office (49 Hollis St., Manchester), or mail it in to the Hippo by Aug. 4. You can hang on to the same passport and take it with you to each restaurant you visit, or you can pick up and drop off a new passport every time you get a stamp.

Additionally, there will be smaller gift certificates and other prizes awarded for daily contests announced on social media. You can participate in those by posting with the hashtag #GraniteStateBurgerChallenge.

“We might feature a burger of the day and say, ‘The first person to snap a pic of themselves eating this burger wins a gift pack,’” Raven said. “There will be clever little contests like that to engage participants and encourage them to play along.”

For more information and contest updates, visit granitestateburgerchallenge.com or search “Granite State Burger Challenge” on Facebook and Instagram.

Participating Restaurants

Airport Diner (2280 Brown Ave., Manchester, 623-5040, thecman.com)

The Barley House (132 N. Main St., Concord, 228-6363, thebarleyhouse.com) Featured burger: The Dublin Burger, made with a peppercorn charred beef burger, whiskey gravy, creamy blue cheese and crispy onions.

Beefside Restaurant (106 Manchester St., Concord, 228-0208, beefsidenh.com)

The Birch On Elm (931 Elm St., Manchester, 782-5365, facebook.com/Thebirchonelm)

British Beer Co. (1071 S. Willow St., Manchester, 232-0589, britishbeer.com) Featured burger: The Longford Burger, made with pulled pork over double Gloucester cheese topped with onion tanglers and peach barbecue sauce, dressed with arugula, red onion and tomato.

Burton’s Grill (310 Daniel Webster Highway, Nashua, 888-4880, burtonsgrill.com) Featured burger: Maxx Burger, made with hand packed certified Angus beef, American cheese, shredded lettuce, tomato, housemade pickles, Burton’s special sauce and crispy onion strings on a griddled bun.

Celebrations Kitchen (1017 Second St., Manchester, 782-8022, celebrationskitchen.com)

Club Manchvegas (50 Old Granite St., Manchester, 222-1677, clubmanchvegas.com)

The Common Man Concord (25 Water St., Concord, 228-3463, thecman.com)

Cork N’ Keg Grill (4 Essex Drive, Raymond, 244-1573, corknkeggrill.com)

Ellacoya Barn & Grille (2667 Lake Shore Road, Gilford, 293-8700, barnandgrille.com)

Flying Goose Brew Pub (40 Andover Road, New London, 526-6899, flyinggoose.com) Featured burger: PB Sriracha Burger, topped with cheddar, bacon, creamy peanut butter and Sriracha sauce.

Fody’s Great American Tavern (9 Clinton St., Nashua, 577-9015, fodystavern.com) Featured burger: Fresh Farmers Burger, made with a 9-ounce char-grilled burger, topped with a fried egg, bacon, Vermont cheddar cheese and a splash of Tabasco sauce.

Harold Square (226 Rockingham Road, Londonderry, 432-7144, haroldsquarenh.com) Featured burger: The Elvis Burger, made with two fresh ground burgers, sharp cheddar cheese, grilled ham, fried eggs, homemade smoked bacon and barbecue sauce on a grilled roll with crisp lettuce, tomato and homemade pickles.

KC’s Rib Shack (837 Second St., Manchester, 627-7427, ribshack.net)

Local Eatery (21 Veterans Square, Laconia, 527-8007, laconialocaleatery.com)

New England Taphouse Grille (1292 Hooksett Road, Hooksett, 782-5137, taphousenh.com)

North Side Grille (323 Derry Road, Hudson, 886-3663, facebook.com/northsidegrille)

Old School Bar & Grill (49 Range Road, Windham, 458-6051, oldschoolbarandgrill.com) Featured burger: Jalapeno Bacon Ranch Burger, made with an 8-ounce Angus burger, topped with American cheese, jalapenos, crispy bacon, ranch dressing, lettuce and tomato on a brioche bun.

Pig Tale Restaurant (449 Amherst St., Nashua, 864-8740, pigtalerestaurant.com) Featured burger: Taylor Burger, made with a local double patty beef burger, topped with local bacon, Vermont cheddar, tomato, Gem lettuce and Pig Tale’s “campfire sauce.”

Restoration Cafe (235 Hanover St., Manchester, 518-7260, restorationcafenh.com)

Riverside Barbeque Co. (53 Main St., Nashua, 204-5110, riversidebarbeque.com) Featured burger: Pig Mac Burger, made with slow-smoked barbecue pulled pork, candied bacon and creamy mac and cheese.

Shorty’s (206 Route 101, Bedford, 488-5706; Nashua Mall, 48 Gusabel Ave., Nashua, 882-4070; 1050 Bicentennial Drive, Manchester, 625-1730, shortysmex.com) Featured burger: B.A.T. Burger, made with a half-pound Angus burger, Vermont cheddar cheese, avocado, oven-roasted grape tomatoes, jalapeno bacon, guacamole ranch and arugula.

The Stumble Inn Bar & Grille (20 Rockingham Road, Londonderry, 432-3210, facebook.com/StumbleInn1) Featured burger: Hawaiian Burger, made with a half-pound fresh ground burger, topped with cheddar cheese, pineapple rings and a touch of Asian chili sauce.

Strange Brew Tavern (88 Market St., Manchester, 666-4292, strangebrewtavern.net)

Tek Nique Restaurant (170 Route 101, Bedford, 488-5629, restaurantteknique.com)

The Wild Rover (21 Kosciuszko St., Manchester, 669-7722, wildroverpub.com) Featured burger: General Tso’s Glazed Burger

Umami Farm Fresh Cafe (284 First NH Turnpike, Northwood, 942-6427, umaminh.com) Featured burger: Spicy Ramen Burger, made with pickled jalapeno, American cheese, napa, fried ramen and Sriracha mayonnaise.

FEATURED NEWS

Beach Trip Tips

How To Navigate Lake Warnings

Written By Ryan Lessard (news@hippopress.com)

Images: Stock Photo

“ADVISORY. High levels of bacteria have been detected in this water.” If you see a yellow sign with those words at your local swimming spot, it means the state Department of Environmental Services wants you to know there’s a risk of getting sick. But not all bacteria threats are the same.

Cyanobacteria

So far this month, there have been three cyanobacteria warnings in the state. According to the Current Beach Advisories map on the DES website, there are 10 advisories as of press time, two of which are for cyanobacteria.

Those are at Silver Lake in Hollis and Elm Brook Park Beach in Hopkinton. Earlier this month, Goose Pond in Canaan also had a cyanobacteria warning, but that has since been lifted, according to Dave Neils, the chief water pollution biologist at DES.

“We’ve actually had documented blooms at about eight lakes and citizen reports at about four different ones,” Neils said.

Cyanobacteria warnings are different from other kinds of bacteria warnings because cyanobacteria blooms are caused by different things and can pose more long-term health threats.
Neils said cyanobacteria, once referred to as blue-green algae, are photosynthetic organisms that are classified as bacteria and can carry a number of harmful toxins. The two most common strains, or taxa, in the state are called microcystis and anabaena.

“They’re very unique organisms in that they can produce multiple toxins,” Neils said.

Because they behave like plankton and use sunlight to synthesize food, cyanobacteria blooms occur in response to a number of environmental factors. While the full combination of factors is still difficult to monitor and predict, generally blooms occur after heavy rains that are followed by a stretch of hot, sunny weather.

“That allows for the bacteria to grow much faster … and they have this perfect bloom condition,” Neils said.

Blooms often appear as surface slime or a hazy cloud.

“To the layperson it presents itself as a scum on the surface of the water. It has a very bright green sheen to it, sometimes bluish green. Other times it can be suspended in the water column,” Neils said.

Unlike other bacterial loads, cyanobacteria threats can change rapidly.

“The cyanobacteria bloom can be there one day and it can be gone the next,” Neils said. “Almost overnight the blooms can go away.”

This happens because cyanobacteria control their position in the water with tiny gas vacuoles. As the ideal conditions for blooms disappear, they release the gas and sink to the bottom of the lake.

For lakes where cyanobacteria is actively blooming, humans and animals can become ill through ingestion but also skin contact and inhaling an aerosolized form of the bacteria, according to Neils.
Among the toxins that cyanobacteria produce are some neurotoxins.

“There can be very severe short-term health effects if you have one of these neurotoxins that you ingest,” Neils said.

There have been reports in other states of pets dying from drinking water with heavy blooms or licking themselves after swimming in such water. There have been no reports of humans or animals dying in New Hampshire from cyanobacteria so far, Neils said.

Cyanobacteria can also cause long-term nerve and liver damage. There’s also some new research that’s found a correlation between areas with frequent cyanobacterial blooms and the neurodegenerative disease ALS. But Neils said there’s more research needed to prove a causal link.

E. coli

Unlike cyanobacteria, which behave like a plant with bug-like properties, E. coli is a bacterial species that is not native to water bodies. Rather, it is native to the gastrointestinal tract of warm-blooded mammals, which means if you can find it in a lake, it probably came from feces.

But when warnings are issued and lakes are closed due to high E. coli levels, public health officials aren’t primarily concerned with the E. coli itself.

“We use E. coli as an indicator organism,” Manchester Public Health Director Tim Soucy said.

In other words, if there’s a lot of E. coli in a lake, it likely means there are other pathogenic microorganisms in there with it, such as salmonella or shigella.

In fact, the E. coli they are finding in water samples is not the same bacterial strain that food safety inspectors recall beef products for.

Similar to cyanobacteria, its prevalence can be affected by rain and temperature, but mostly by runoff. It can also be affected by the presence of geese, dogs, babies in diapers and lots of swimmers.

“Anything that can put feces in the water is a potential source of E. coli,” Soucy said.

The main pathway for people to become ill from E. coli is oral ingestion of the water.

Humans can suffer short-term effects similar to those caused by fecal bacteria such as gastroenteritis, nausea, vomiting.

For the most part, swimmers are given the choice to swim at their own risk when advisories are posted, but in some cases, like with Crystal Lake in Manchester, which is licensed to the city, authorities will enforce the lake’s closure until bacteria levels drop back down to safe levels.

FEATURED ARTS

For The Love of Metal

Jewelry artist Joy Raskin on Jewelry Making in NH

Written By Kelly Sennott (ksennott@hippopress.com)

Images: Stock Photo

For many artists, the decision to create professionally is a scary one, muddled with questions like, am I good enough? Will I be able to find work? Will my pieces sell?

Joy Raskin made her choice as a teen at Concord High School in the ’80s during a metalsmithing class. Jewelry-making in particular enraptured her; she loved hammering, cutting, twisting and manipulating the form to create something beautiful. She hadn’t a doubt in her mind — this was her destiny.

“By the end of the first semester, I said to my teacher, ‘This is what I want to do. This is my career,’” Raskin said during a recent interview in her studio.

Raskin was juried into the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen days before high school graduation (one of the youngest ever to do so) and went on to earn her BFA at the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA at UMass-Dartmouth. Upon her return home, she worked for Mark Knipe Goldsmiths, but it wasn’t until she earned an individual artist fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts in 1995 that she dove in and became serious about her art.

“It wasn’t until after grad school, when I got working on my own and started teaching — that was a leap of faith for me,” Raskin said. “But if you want to be an artist, you have to go for it. Just make sure you have a cushion to fall back on — like a part-time job or a savings account. Do what you need to do to get your vision out there.”

Typically, Raskin works three jobs — as an instructor (with the Lexington Arts and Crafts Society, the New Hampshire Institute of Art, the Craft Center with the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen and Metalwerx School of Jewelry Arts), as a creative goldsmith at Goldsmiths Gallery in Concord and as a professional artist. This summer, she’s focusing on readying for the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen’s Fair in August.

Raskin, who works in Concord, was born deaf but communicates well, thanks to years of speech therapy and cochlear implants. The disability never hindered her ability to design. In fact, she jokes it’s kind of nice sometimes.

“I can turn my cochlear implants off and make all the noise I want and don’t have to listen!” she said, laughing.

The day of the interview, her work bench was scattered with half-made pieces — metal cuff bracelets, rings set with beautiful stones and embedded with intricate designs, earrings whose shapes seem to defy the laws of metal. Some appear to drip down like teardrops, and others resemble blooming florals.

“What I’m really interested in is volume. How can I make something really large but delicate?” Raskin said. “I don’t want to be doing the same thing over and over. I try to think a little beyond what juried designs are out there. … I gave myself a challenge a couple years ago to make a pair of earrings with one piece of wire. That limitation actually let me do a wide variety of designs.”

Living in the city, Raskin’s pieces were architectural. When she moved back to New Hampshire, the jewelry became infused with nature.

“All of a sudden, I was surrounded by flowers and trees and plants. My work has gotten a lot more leafy. It’s hard to escape the great outdoors around here!” Raskin said.

To date, Raskin’s love of metalsmithing spans 33 years. She’s worked with silver, gold, copper, brass, bronze and steel. Admittedly, sometimes, it’s hard; you go through phases where nothing seems to jell, nothing seems to work. Creating alone in a studio can be lonely, and retail is always iffy.

“You have to sell work at craft shows, galleries and stores, and you’re never quite sure how much money you’re going to be getting each month. So I balance it by teaching and working,” Raskin said.

But her feelings about the art haven’t changed a bit. It remains challenging and fascinating to her, and when inspiration does hit, it can take any form — even her pet hedgehog, Pumpkin Peanut.

“Metal, to me, is magic. I just love it. And sometimes, it’s hard to put it into words, but it’s very much a part of me. I think and breathe metal,” Raskin said. “My motto is, torch in one hand, hammer in the other.”

Joy Raskin

To see or buy her work, to commission a piece or to contact her, visit joyraskin.com

FEATURED MUSIC

Cinema Show

Comic Gottfried Helps Open Newest Chunky’s

Written By Michael Witthaus (music@hippopress.com)

Images: Courtesy Photo

It’s fitting that Gilbert Gottfried is one of the first comedians to perform at the newly opened Manchester franchise of Chunky’s Cinema Pub, where most people come to the luxury multiplex for the movies. Gottfried hosts a podcast devoted to Hollywood’s golden era, and his New York home is filled with pieces of movieola.

So the inveterate film buff is keen on the Chunky’s concept, where people typically watch movies while reclined in a Lincoln Town Car seat with a burger in one hand and a beer in the other.

“Everyone thinks they’re at their home at the movies anyway,” Gottfried said in a recent phone interview. “[You’re sitting] in an easy chair with people bringing you food — there are certain movies … that I kind of wish I were in that situation where I didn’t have to watch the movie.”

Gottfried is also the subject of new documentary, a fact that has him less than thrilled, if not outright grouchy. He only agreed to the film, which screened in April at Tribeca, after director Neil Berkeley invited him to lunch — and promised to pay. The comic said in one interview that he’d probably dine with Mussolini if he picked up the check.

Gilbert is a disarmingly sweet film, with appearances from Whoopi Goldberg, Lewis Black, Bill Burr and other comedian pals, but Gottfried likened his involvement to dying and going to the wrong place.

“It’s really what I envision hell to be like. You die and then you’re forced to watch your entire life on the screen,” he said. “Surprisingly, it’s gotten great reviews, but I can’t really enjoy it.”

When pressed, he’s a bit more good-natured.

“I guess if I were in hell, I’d have to remind myself that of all the things they could be doing to you, maybe watching a movie is not the worst of it,” he said. “Now if it were Hitler, that would be a harder movie to watch.”

The film revisits Gottfried’s loss of his Aflac duck gig after a series of offensive tweets, an experience that made him feel a bit, well, Hitler-esque.

“I didn’t know how the whole internet and society worked,” he said when asked if he might have done anything differently. “They’re constantly looking for villains. ... Someone who blew up a school bus would have garnered more sympathy than I did.”

Getting stalked by reporters and paparazzi while the affair played out gave him vital perspective, particularly when wags declared the damage to be permanent.

“It truly is over when no one’s talking about you, when if you rescue a baby from a burning building, it won’t get press,” Gottfried said. “But if their top story is your career is over, then your career is not over.”

He’s had the final word, staying busy with lots of club work, and Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast. Cohosted by Frank Santopadre, the show gives the privately reticent comic a chance to talk with guests he’d otherwise never meet.

“I don’t know the phone numbers of maybe more than two celebrities, and I would have to look for them,” he said. “With this podcast, it gives me an excuse to talk to these people.”
Television and film legend Dick Van Dyke provided one of his favorite moments making the show, though it happened off mike.

“He told me that in school his nickname was ‘Dick Nose,’” Gottfried said with his trademark cackle. “Whenever the teacher would ask a question, she’d say, ‘Who knows the answer?’ The class would scream out, ‘Dick knows!’ That’s something you never heard on The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

Gottfried visits the Granite State often. Asked if he likes it here, the comic offered a classic response.

“Well, what am I supposed to say? I don’t know if I have really strong opinions, like people who hate blacks or Jews. I’ll go, ‘Oh, those people in New Hampshire, those are the ones I hate,’ and that’ll be something people know about me! They’ll go, ‘Oh, he might be lovable in his movies, but offstage he hates people from New Hampshire.’ That would be great if that was my next scandal.”

Gilbert Gottfried

When: Thursday, July 6, 8 p.m.
Where: Chunky’s Cinema Pub, 707 Huse Road, Manchester
Tickets: $30 at chunkys.com

FEATURED FILM

Film Review

Transformers: The Last Knight (PG-13)

Written By Amy Diaz (adiaz@hippopress.com)

Images: Movie Screenshot

Humans and Autobots join forces, again, to save the world, again, in Transformers: The Last Knight, the fifth and possibly worst of the Michael Bay Transformers movies.

And “worst” has some competition in this series.

Glossing over many many things in the end-of-the-yard-sale heap of random dump-bound items that is this movie, here is the basic story: Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), inventor from the last movie, receives a magical knight accessory from a new-to-Earth Autobot. This metal seal, which attaches itself to Cade’s bicep, can turn into a weapon when needed and is also sort of sentient, it appears.

Also, a British historian-type/Megan Fox dead-ringer named Vivian Wembley (Laura Haddock) finds out she is the last in a family line that traces all the way back to Merlin (Stanley Tucci), wizard of King Arthur fame. As such, she has the power to wield a magical staff that, among other things, helps control a three-headed dragon made up of several knight-like Transformers who crashed on Earth some millennium and a half ago.

These two knight-related factoids come together in a fight to protect the planet from Quintessa (voice of Gemma Chan), a Transformer god (Transformer god?) who wants to, if I understand this correctly, use the aforementioned magic staff to plug the remains of Cybertron, the Transformers’ home world, into Earth (via Stonehenge, a magical USB port, I guess), which will lead to the rebirth of Cybertron and the destruction of Earth, which, wasn’t that sort of the plot of a previous Transformers movie? (The third one, according to Wikipedia. And, also, sort of, Man of Steel?)

Transformers: The Last Knight is a mess, a jumbled crazy mess even messier and jumbledier than The Mummy, which I remember only a few weeks ago thinking set a new low for crazy messiness. In addition to the aforementioned plot, this movie includes:

• A 14-year-old daughter-like figure for Cade named Izabella (Isabela Moner). I feel like the purpose of Izabella is to provide an answer to those (me, for example) who think these movies tend to be icky about girls and women. Izabella is a bad-ass tween-type who is an engineer and lives in the rubble created from some Transformers-related battle. Izabella is super-important early in the movie and then, like, disappears, only to be shoved into the finale for no reason. Consider the “positive portrayals of women and girls” box not checked, movie.

• A flashback that riffs on the King Arthur stories and features Stanley Tucci having a pretty good time playing Merlin.

• Anthony Hopkins, whose character has this whole storyline about being in a secret society called the Witwiccan (who, like, know about the ye olden Transformers and Merlin and may or may not be related to Merlin; I Googled this plot point and I still don’t get it). But the otherwise forgotten Sam Witwicky of the first three movies does get a very brief visual nod. Also, Hopkins character may or may not be bonkers, the movie can’t seem to decide. (Side note: I also did a fair amount of Googling to try to figure out if the Laura Haddock character’s name is Vivian or Viviane and I can’t get a straight answer on that either.)

• Hopkins’ character’s possibly immortal rage-filled robot butler, voiced by Jim Carter a.k.a. Carson the butler from Downton Abbey.

• An unnecessary John Turturro whose character delivers most of his lines from a phone booth in Cuba.

• An international military force that hunts down Transformers of all stripes, usually showing up whenever the movie needs some explosions.

• A different branch of the U.S. military that still employs the Josh Duhamel character.

• Some Optimus Prime (voice of Peter Cullen) continuing-saga stuff (he meets Quintessa on a trip to ... do … something).

• A subplot about Megatron (voice of Frank Welker) that I never really understood.

• An odd anti-science message toward the end of the movie, which pits a scientist’s perfectly sensible idea for destroying the Cybertron power-sucker against Vivian’s plan to just grab the staff, “by the power of Grayskull”-style. I feel like in a better movie, these things would work together.

Pick, like, two of those things, pair it with the Transformers movies’ admirable disinterest in taking themselves seriously and the inherent possibilities for action awesomeness that come with sentient robots that can transform into cars and you could have a decent action movie. (You would also need to slice the movie down by an hour and set an “acceptable number of cuts per scene” limit at considerably fewer than this movie feels is OK.) But all of these things, stuffed into one movie, especially one movie that seems pretty lax about plot and pacing and internal logic, and you have a junk-drawer effect of a wad of single socks, rubber bands, out-of-date pizza menus, pen caps and old receipts. Sure, there might be a useable gift card in there somewhere, but are you really going to dig through to find it? Likewise, there might be some promise in a “girl living in a no man’s land, fixing wounded Autobots” set up or an “Autobot refugees flock to Earth” plot point (two things this movie sets up in the beginning and then never returns to), but when you bury these things in so much narrative garbage and visual clutter, who cares?

Perhaps weirdest of all, this Transformers movie feels really light on Transformers and story related to our core Transformers. At some point, the movie wanders around in Vivian’s story, not just her role as the last Witwiccan (or the last whatever she is) but also her relationship with her late father and her mother’s desire for her to get married. Talk about a big scoop of “who cares” plunked into the story in the middle of the action (well, sort of in the middle of the action; though every scene has that movie trailer “maximum excitement, minimum space” feel, the movie felt like it took forever to rev up, arguably until the final act). The few times that we get scenes that put the Transformers themselves at the center, I was reminded that they can be fun characters — the kind of characters you might want to feature in a movie called Transformers.

Grade: D-

FEATURED POP  -  * COVER STORIES *

Tent Out

The Essentials of Tent Camping

Written By Matt Ingersol (listings@hippopress.com)

Images: Courtesy Photo

Local campground owners and seasoned campers say tent camping is the best way to get the most out of the outdoors — and it can be pretty enjoyable if you’re properly prepared.

Tents come in all kinds of different sizes and types, including dome tents, ridge tents and tunnel tents. Some have their own built-in features like screens to put up to keep mosquitoes out.

“If you’re looking to get a tent long-term, you need to make sure you’re able to stand up and get dressed in it comfortably,” said Ellen Bagley, co-owner of Autumn Hills Campground in Weare. “Tarps are also pretty much a necessity too, because you can use it to prevent the tent from getting wet if it rains.”

Bagley said sporting goods stores like Dick’s and Eastern Mountain Sports are always great sources for tents, but even department stores like Wal-Mart have their own extensive collections.
Jessica Byrnes, a seasoned tent camper of more than 25 years and whose father is a member of the Epsom-based New Hampshire Campground Owners Association, said tents can range anywhere from $50 to $800, depending on quality and size.

What you use to sleep inside the tent can include anything from sleeping bags to foam mats or even air mattresses if you have air pumps, Bagley said.

“The thing about air mattresses to keep it mind is that if the weather is cool, sometimes it will actually feel colder on the air mattress than on the ground itself,” she said. “So that’s when you could use a warm comforter with it.”

And since tents don’t have the temperature-controlled luxury of RVs or cabins, proper clothing is essential.

“For camping around Memorial Day weekend or Columbus Day weekend, it could always get hotter or colder than you might expect, so I’d usually pack clothes for all four seasons,” Byrnes said.

Footwear is important too, especially at tent sites where the terrain is likely a little rough. Bagley recommends making sure you bring at least one pair of a sturdy type of footwear, like laced sneakers or hiking boots, not just flip-flops or sandals.

“Around the campfire is one thing, but otherwise, you don’t want to constantly leave your feet open for rocky and gravel surfaces, or for walking up and down a hill. You’d want something a little safer underfoot,” she said.

When you’re setting up your tent, be sure to consider its location.

“Fire is always a big safety hazard, so it’s important to remember not to set up your tent too close to your fire pit so it doesn’t catch fire, and also if you have little kids, to make sure they’re not walking or sitting too close to the fire,” she said.

To prevent the attraction of wild animals to your campsite, make sure you never leave food unattended and that it is stored properly.

“In New Hampshire, we’ll get everything ... from bobcats and fisher cats to bears and moose,” Bagley said. “Tent campers need to always be vigilant and to not leave their trash out, or feed the animals, because they will come back. … Aluminum foil and zip-lock bags are also great tools to store food in your car, as well as double-duty things like Tupperware containers.”

Bagley said Leatherman tools are useful, not only for cooking and food preparation but for propping your tent as well. Most tools can convert to be used as knives, can openers, hammers and other useful tools.

The key to getting the most out of tent camping is to remember not to let the unexpected spoil the fun.

“It doesn’t have to be as uncomfortable as some people may think, because you can do so much with so little,” Bagley said, “and if you forget something, you shouldn’t let that ruin your weekend. … Taking what you have and improvising with it is important.”

Home Away From Home

The Best Way to Go Glamping

Written By Ryan Lessard (news@hippopress.com)

Images: Courtesy Photo

With recreational vehicles, or RVs, campers can set up all the amenities of home at a camp site.

Basic vs. Luxury

Howard “BJ” Hallett has been a salesman at Camping World of New Hampshire in Chichester for 12 years. He said the most popular types of RVs are travel trailers.

“They tend to be bunk houses because it’s a family vacation kind of thing,” Hallett said.

Travel trailers are the most basic boxy camper that is towed by another vehicle. On the small side, they can be 15 to 16 feet long, Hallett said. If they’re being towed somewhat regularly, the larger sizes tend to be 35 to 36 feet. If they’re meant to be stationary at a permanent location, they’re more likely to reach up to 40 feet in length.

The next most popular are “fifth wheel” trailers, which are identified by their front extension that slopes prominently over a flatbed hitch, followed by motorhomes, which are RVs where the automobile and the camper are one and the same.

The motorhomes are divided into classes A, B and C. The Class A motorhomes are the large bus-style vehicles. They are made with gas and diesel engines, but Hallett said the diesel pusher models are the least popular because they’re more expensive and less cost-effective to maintain.

The Class B “looks like a conversion van with a raised roof,” but Hallett said the smaller Class C motorhomes are the most popular, in part because they are less difficult to drive.

“They feel more comfortable in a smaller cockpit of the van style with the body on the back versus the Class A with the big monster windshield in front of them,” Hallett said.

On the smaller end, the most common size for Class C motorhomes is about 24 to 25 feet long. Most standard Class Cs are built on a Ford E-450 chassis, which can go up to about 32 feet. Class A motorhomes can range in size from 26 to 38 feet, according to Hallett, and diesel pushers range from 34 to 45 feet on average.

Buying vs. Renting

Hallett said the average customer pays about $200 to $300 per month for a new financed camper. On the high end, he calculates customers would be paying somewhere around $910 per month on his most popular high-end model, the A.C.E. Motorhome by Thor Motor Coach. That’s assuming a customer puts 10 percent down on the $141,000 vehicle with an interest rate of about 5.99 percent.

Buying an RV is like buying a home in the sense that one needs to account for things like appliance maintenance and utility costs on top of the regular finance payments. But when it comes to the investment, it’s more like a car, which reliably depreciates in value.

“If you buy something for $100[K], you could go to trade it the next day, it’s worth about 70 to 75 thousand,” Hallett said.

Some people prefer to rent campers, often as a way of testing the waters and seeing if they like it enough to buy one. For others, it’s a simple matter of not having a place to store a camper. Carl Sylvester, the owner of Northeast RV Rentals in Northwood, said it can cost anywhere from $95 per night for a pop-up trailer to $295 per night for a luxury Class C motorhome. Some smaller trailers that can be towed by motorcycles can cost as little as $50 per night.

For motorhomes, Sylvester said it costs 45 cents per mile for every mile over 100.

Home Away from Home

Kelly Wood, the property manager at Sandy Beach RV Resort in Contoocook, calls camping in an RV “glamping,” a portmanteau of glamorous camping, because RVs provide almost all the amenities of home.

“A camper is a minihome, ultimately,” Wood said. “Everything is inside of your camper that you could possibly need.”

Hallett said most Class C motorhomes include standard amenities like a kitchen, a bathroom, a cable hookup for a TV and connections for electricity, water and sewage.
Some campsites, including Wood’s, offer all those connections at their RV spots, but some parks have dump stations for sewage on the way out of the park.

The quality of the features varies based on the model. For instance, all RVs come with a basic kitchen, but higher-end models come with Corian countertops instead of the typical Formica, stainless steel appliances and, while all provide a space for a TV, pricier models come with the TV already installed.

Better models have porcelain toilet bowls, compared to plastic toilet bowls, or medicine cabinet mirrors rather than just a mirror. They all come with a shower but upscale models replace shower curtains with Plexiglass doors.

All models generally have air conditioning and a water heater.  Mattress sizes vary in RVs and the more high-end motorhomes will have more comfortable pillowtop mattresses or memory foam mattresses that keep sleepers cool by maintaining air flow.

Under Cover

Cabins Offer a More Laid Back Experience

Written By Angie Sykeny (asykeny@hippopress.com)

Images: Courtesy Photo

If you’re new to camping or looking for a more relaxed camping experience, cabin camping may be a good option. Some cabins provide only shelter while others provide all the modern comforts of home, so you can choose your preferred level of roughing it.

For the full camping experience minus the tent, there are rustic cabins, which may include a few essentials or may be nothing more than a roof over your head. Friendly Beaver Campground in New Boston is one local campground that offers rustic cabins; each cabin consists of a single room with a closet, a queen bed and two sets of bunk beds, a small table and chairs, and minimal electricity for lighting and a ceiling fan. A charcoal grill and fire ring are provided outside for cooking, and there’s a public bathroom a short walk away.

“The term is ‘rustic’ because it’s supposed to be very rustic and in nature. It’s not like a hotel,” Friendly Beaver Manager Robert Charest said. “It’s just a different type of shelter for people who don’t like to sleep on the ground, but outside of that, there is no difference [from traditional camping].”

At Exeter Elms Family Campground in Exeter, campers have a choice between a rustic cabin and a full cabin, which includes beds, a bathroom and a working kitchen equipped with a refrigerator, stove, oven, microwave, toaster and coffeemaker.

“The rustic cabin is just four wooden walls and a roof, so it’s basically like camping in a giant tent, only if it rains, you won’t get soaked,” Exeter Elms office manager Robin Falef said. “The full cabins are for people who don’t want to do regular camping. They want all the bells and whistles and luxuries of home.”

Some campgrounds have full cabins with even more amenities. The cabins at Silver Lake Park Campground & Cabins in Belmont, for example, include everything the Exeter Elms cabins have, plus a living room area, HDTV, internet access and climate control.

These kinds of cabins are typically used as a more outdoors-centric alternative to a hotel for people who travel to the area for a particular attraction. (Campers at Exeter Elms often spend their days at Hampton Beach while Silver Lake Park campers are often there to vacation at the lake.) Falef said they are not a good fit for people seeking an intentional and authentic camping experience, and that people should be wary of how the term “camping” is used nowadays.

“Unfortunately, camping doesn’t mean what it used to,” she said. “Camping [at the full cabins] isn’t really camping. Real camping is about roughing it.”

Cabin camping can, however, be a good option for first-time campers and people who want to get a taste of the experience before investing the time and money needed for a more bare-bones camping trip.

“We get all these calls from people who want to try camping but are too nervous because they don’t know how to pitch a tent and do all this camping stuff,” Silver Lake Park campground manager Ashley Jaynes said. “This is a way for them to try camping on their own while still having the luxuries they’re used to.”

Cabin camping can also be a way for people and families with mixed enthusiasm about the outdoors to experience some of the fun that camping has to offer without being cut off from the outside world. Between lake activities like swimming, fishing, boating, canoeing and kayaking; hiking the surrounding trails and hanging out around the campfire, Jaynes said, most campers at Silver Lake Park find themselves spending very little time using the television and internet anyway.

“There may be people who won’t go camping because they don’t want spiders or don’t want to use a public bathroom, or because they have to have their smartphones,” Jaynes said. “I wish they knew that there is a more modern way of camping where they can still check in with their smartphones and post a photo to Facebook and have all these amenities. Then, they might give camping a chance.”

Beyond Hot Dogs

Ideas for Cooking over a Fire

Written By Kelly Sennott (ksennott@hippopress.com)

Images: Stock Photo

Cooking over a campfire doesn’t have to be as basic as holding marshmallows on a stick over the flames. The next time you go camping, consider making fancier treats, or even a whole meal.

Start the Fire

Starting the right kind of fire is the most important thing, said Heidi Holman, a biologist with New Hampshire Fish and Game who also teaches workshops with Becoming an Outdoors-Woman. But it’s not always easy.

“Too often, people start with fuel that’s too big, so they get frustrated because the fire goes out and the fuel hasn’t caught. You want to start with a lot of tinder — dry leaves, grass, really small twigs. Some people bring dryer lint from home,” Holman said.

Next, layer on pine needles, then small twigs followed by larger twigs. Eventually, you’ll have enough flame to add larger pieces of wood. Holman estimated it will take at least 15 minutes of solid activity before the fire creates coals ready to cook with.

The food you’re cooking and how you’re cooking it will determine the kind of fire you want. If you’re using a Dutch oven, for instance, you’ll probably simmer over a flame, not coals. The size of the party matters, too.

“When we teach this [outdoor cooking] class, we do a large fire because there are 15 people. But if it’s just you and maybe your kids, you’ll want to have it in a contained area so the fire doesn’t spread,” Holman said.

Food on a Stick

Feeling lazy? Put a hot dog on a stick. Done. But you can also jazz that up easily; before you cook the hot dog, cut each end partway before placing it over the fire. As you cook, the sliced ends will curl, resembling spider legs.

Tara Pacht, vice president of the Girl Scouts of the Green and White Mountains board, said one of the challenges at a workshop she taught was to cook an egg on a stick; very carefully stick a skewer through a raw egg, then roast it over the fire like a marshmallow.

And of course, camping isn’t camping without a s’more, and there are a zillion ways to vamp up yours. (Fun fact: the Girl Scouts originated the recipe, published in Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts in 1927.) Pacht advised trying it with Nutella instead of a Hershey bar or cookies instead of graham crackers. Or melt your chocolate at the same time as your mallow by slicing a pocket and plopping the chocolate square inside. You could also replace your marshmallow with a strawberry covered in fluff or a Peeps marshmallow.

Foil Packs

This is probably the next-easiest cooking method with the fastest cleanup. Pacht likes foil packs because they allow you to individualize the meal for each camper. Fill them with meat, veggies and potatoes for a “hobo stew packet” (slicing potatoes very thin, and choosing vegetables with lots of moisture, which will help the potatoes steam). Double-wrap them with heavy-duty foil and keep them small enough to cook fully, particularly if they contain meat. (If you use lightweight or inexpensive foil, it’s possible the foil will deteriorate, said Holman.) Place them on coals, not flames, and check regularly. Another idea, courtesy of Pacht: cut a spaghetti squash in half, fill with ground beef and tomato sauce, wrap in foil, and voila — spaghetti and meatballs.

Dutch Oven and Pie Irons

Dutch ovens kind of look like witches’ cauldrons and work best either sitting on a bed of coals or hanging over the fire on a tripod. Pacht said she made a killer spinach cheese dip with a Dutch oven teaching a recent workshop with Girl Scout volunteers, combining fresh spinach, a variety of cheeses, sour cream and artichokes. You can tackle spaghetti with these, too; throw in some dry pasta, water and tomato sauce, and it’s a one-pot meal. You can even bake cookies in a Dutch oven.

But Pacht’s favorite outdoor cooking gadget is the pie iron, which is kind of like an enclosed skillet attached to a stick you place in the fire. Fill it with buttered bread and cheese for an epic grilled cheese, rotating part-way through, or bake a pie by inserting pre-made crust and fruit filling inside. Most any kind of sandwich melt will work with these, but if you want to mix it up, use phyllo dough instead of bread and make a caprese (mozzarella, tomato, basil) or make it sweet with brie, apples and honey. The pie iron is also perfect for pizza with premade crust.

More Tips

Rookies: keep an eye on the fire, and season your cast iron equipment before using. To save time on washing dishes afterward, Pacht recommends spreading a layer of soap on the outside of your pans to keep soot from sticking. After that, the options are endless. All it takes is some creativity.

“If I can cook it at home, I can cook it in the woods with some modifications,” Pacht said. “We think about what we ate at the house and how we can modify that recipe for the ease and creativity of camping. … Google ‘creative campfire cooking’ or ‘fun outdoor camp cooking’ and you can get some fabulous ideas. … It’s a very social activity. When somebody’s cooking at home, it might be one or two people, but this engages everybody.”