Live + Love + Teach = "Art": pumpkin heads

My husband Tom and I took a short trip up to the beautiful White Mountains of New Hampshire this past week. We love visiting this area and have camped many times before in the areas surrounding the White Mountain National Forest. This year we brought along our dog Mel and decided to rent a cabin at a local motel instead. This worked out just fine for our few days of leaf looking, Mt. Washington Auto Road driving, trail hiking, and of course a little rainy day outlet shopping. When we first arrived we were driving in the small town of Jackson, and noticed the above display of a bed on the side of the street. With Halloween approaching, I thought it was a very clever and inventive decoration for the nearby inn to have to welcome their guests. As we drove around Jackson, and the neighboring towns over the next few days, we began to notice what we coined "pumpkin heads", popping up all around, each with a unique theme or message. Deciding it must be more than a coincidence that "everyone in the area was decorating with pumpkin heads"!....I did a little research to find out that indeed, it is a Jackson Chamber of Commerce sponsored event called, "Return of the Pumpkin People". This event has been going on for 24 years in Jackson, NH and the surrounding area! On our last day visiting, the weather was quite rainy, so after lunch, we decided to take a nice drive around and view as many of the Pumpkin People as we could find. There is a map on the Jackson website, however we chose to make it more of a scavenger hunt, looking at the map quickly once, and then going off on our own to explore the area. I photographed the ones we found and Tom, Mel, and I chose our favorites. I noticed also on the website there is a ballot for a "People's Choice" award. I think I will be printing that out and sending my vote in. We had a great time checking out all the hard work that went into these creative, whimsical and inventive designs. Just one more reason to head on up to NH!