Practical Traveler Emerita Gets you to JAWS at Attitash
Wade at the Wheel
Attitash Grand Summit Hotel
Bartlett, N.H.
If you’re flying into the Northeast for JAWS Sept. 5-7, or earlier in the week for the Cheryl Hampton-Rita Jensen hiking rendezvous nearby, your airport choices, in my order of preference, are:
Portland, Maine (PWM)Manchester, New Hampshire (MHT)
Logan Airport, Boston, Massachusetts (BOS)
PWM is served by Air Tran, Continental, Delta, JetBlue, Northwest, United and US Airways. It has 49 nonstops a day from as far west as Chicago.
MHT is not served by Air Tran or JetBlue but is served by Air Canada and Southwest, plus the other airlines serving Portland. The website has a moving toteboard of flight arrivals.
BOS is served by almost all commercial airlines, except Southwest, which appears to have been funneled to MHT.
One other oddball possibility if you like trains: Amtrak provides regular daily service on the Downeaster from Boston North (yes, North) Station to Portland. The trip takes two and a half hours and costs $24. You may find the schedule here. You can take the T (laboriously) from Logan to North Station, or a cab. If you Amtrak into Boston, it’s a pretty easy transfer.
However you get to any of these three cities, you’ll will want wheels, preferably a shared van rental, the people at Attitash say. Jen, whom I talked to, said the resort could sell you a half-pint of milk, but if you want a quart for your en-suite kitchen, it’s five miles away at Glen, N.H., where Routes 302, your route in, and 16 intersect.
The drive from Portland – the distances from the jetport and the railroad station at 100 Thompson’s Point Road are essentially the same – is 68 miles. This is almost all on a two-lane road and takes one and a half to two hours. It’s a drive of beauty that takes you northwest through southern Maine for about 50 miles and then into New Hampshire and the White Mountain National Forest, where Attittash is.
The drive from Manchester is 93 miles, much of it north on I-93 until you enter the White Moutains. Call it two and a half hours.
Boston is 150 miles distant. Of this, 57 miles is on I-93 to get you to Manchester. One hazard with using Boston is that Logan Airport is on the far side of the city and you must fight your way out of urban traffic at the start.
The Attitash site gives driving directions from everywhere, and car rental companies will do the same. The resort has no numbered address on Route 302, but it’s on Bear Peak if you look at a map.
Those of you joining Cheryl and Rita for their pre-JAWS venture, hiking, chowing down, sitting by the fire and making the “Rolling Moose Run,” will want to know that the Highland Center at Crawford Notch is about 20 minutes distant from Attitash. So the same options for arrival apply to both places. If you’ve spoken for a place in Rita’s van when she makes a pickup at the Manchester Airport on Monday night, Sept. 1, Labor Day, you can probably get over to Attitash with her later in the week.
The Auto Club state map series puts Maine and New Hampshire on the same map, opposite sides. There’s enough of the Boston area to keep you out of trouble.
-- Betsy Wade