B-18 Plane Crash Wreckage - Woodstock, NH

During WWII, German U-Boats along the eastern coast of the United States fired upon and sank 233 American ships through a series of strikes named Operation Drumbeat. These sneak attacks were a tactic the United States was ill prepared for, and which ultimately cost 5,000 men and women their lives. In an effort to thwart them, American planes patrolled the Atlantic coast, but on the 14th of January in 1942, tragedy struck.

Having lost their bearings due to bad weather, pilots of a B-18 Bomber spotted what they thought was the city of Providence through a break in the clouds, and knowing there was an airfield in nearby Massachusetts, set their course north. It wasn't Providence they had seen however, it was Concord NH, and their search for an airfield that did not exist took them into our White Mountains. Their second and final mistake was to dip below the clouds for a peek, where the B-18 began scraping trees until crashing into the side of Mount Waternomee.

75 years later, wreckage from this tragedy still remains strewn about the mountain, and if you're up for a several mile hike with some fairly steep climbing, you can visit this crash scene for yourself.

It was nearly three years ago that I made my hike up Mt Waternomee, and as a guy who once lost his car keys in the pocket of the pants he was wearing, some of the finer details of that trip have escaped me. I was alone - having skipped out of work for a mental health day - and wandered from one chunk of metal to the next, taking pictures of each while trying not to smile.

When you visit a plane crash site in the mountains of New Hampshire, generally speaking, you're not going to find a plane but instead hundreds of pieces of metal. The remains of this B-18 were no different.

Some of the most impressive to see were the twin 1,000 hp engines this aircraft came equipped with.

Six men occupied the plane, and although two of them tragically lost their lives, four survived. According to a sign posted at the site by either family or friends of survivor Craig Fletcher, he went on to live a long and happy life back in California before retiring to Washington State.

I found a shard with a crumpled up star on it, and after spending a little time with Google found this picture of a B-18, which seems to have the same logo underneath the wing.

Unlike most adventures where we will spend a couple of hours enjoying our find, it doesn't take long to feel like you're overstaying your welcome in a place like this. One lap around the wreckage and I was ready to leave.

There are times when I am trying to tell a story and I'm lucky in that my posts seem to write themselves. If I'm describing something fun like an abandoned vehicle or a forgotten mineshaft, I can often knock out a rough draft in just one evening. Plane crashes are a whole other story, and particularly this one. Because so much about it has been written already, I didn't want to just rehash what better researchers and writers have already had to say, and instead tried to make it about my own personal trip. But that's where I kept getting stuck. Normally I try keeping my stories lighthearted and with a few laughs sprinkled in, but when you're standing at a spot where people lost their lives horrifically, there just aren't that many yucks to be had.

On my return back down the mountain I came across this narrow stream, and because I'm easily distracted, I followed it.

It led me to a small but picturesque waterfall, and although the pictures I took failed to come close at capturing its beauty, it nevertheless proved to be just the distraction I needed. After enjoying it for a while, I finished my descent feeling a little less heavy. Now I had it straight - I wasn't just returning home from seeing the remains of a terrible plane crash, I was also returning home from experiencing a wonderful day in nature.

Cave Hunting On Moose Mountain - Middleton NH

Northeast Caver Magazine, which maintains the most comprehensive list of caves within New Hampshire that I am aware of, had at last count over 200 wild caves in their database. 'Wild' means it is not one of our commercial caves, which for New Hampshire rules out just two places - the Polar Caves and Lost River. Everything else on that list is a cave sitting alone in the woods somewhere, waiting to be explored.

Within this treasure trove of a database there is one thing you will not find, and that is any limestone cave created by an underground river. We live in the Granite State, which means unlike those lucky folks down south, instead of long and winding tunnels, our caves are cubby holes and small pockets created by boulders getting tossed around during the last ice age.

A great example of one of these boulder fields is found on the south side of Moose Mountain, a region officially known as the Ellis R. Hatch Jr Wildlife Management Area. There you will find a long ledge littered with thousand of boulders, creating a playground of nooks and crannies to spend an afternoon crawling through.

Our goal this day was to locate and explore the Moose Mountain Cave, the largest of several small caves along this ledge. Between our hike to the mountain and all our searching, my GPS registered just a tick under 3 total miles we traveled that afternoon. And if not for the last ten percent that found us clambering over rocks, this would have been a pleasurable walk with a couple nice sights along the way.

Pleasurable is nice, but it's not something that's going to get me out of bed early on my day off. For that I need adventure. Also, I'm part of a marriage that is one big competition, so this quickly turned into a contest of who could find the official cave first. Bragging rights for the biggest unofficial cave went to my wife Tina, who found a crawlspace that opened into an underground chamber big enough for me to hang out in. Although we referred to it as Tina's Cave, a very old bear trap outside its entrance told us we were not the original finders of this spot.

A fun cave to investigate if you don't mind getting dirty. Or eaten alive.

One of us eventually located Moose Mountain Cave near the top of the ledge, and the fact that I can't remember who it was means it wasn't me. The cave resembles a hallway, and for most people I'm guessing that walking to the end of it is their entire exploration.

But I'm also guessing that good judgement factors into most peoples explorations, and that's where our roads fork. I scoured the cave and found a small hole along the bottom-right wall which led to a second chamber, and looked barely large enough for me to slither into. I made it through the opening and into this second room, left a coin in the back as a present for the next person who dared venture inside, then posed for a couple pictures like a whack-a-mole before coming out.

In addition to being a successful exploration, Moose Mountain was a great example of one of our favorite types of adventures - it was a day spent out in nature, it was time spent doing things with friends, and it was a place that had just enough surprises to send us home that night with a couple of new stories to tell.