An acquaintance recommended we check into the site Only in Your State to see what New England adventures we may have missed. Veteran’s Day has become my day to decorate the apartment for Christmas so I thought I’d look through the site to see if there was something Christmas like to go visit. Fortune favored me and I found this cool place called the Christmas Dove in Barrington, NH. We dropped off my car at the dealership for a 30,000 mile checkup and deemed Janet’s car the official transport for our little adventure. Barrington is about an hour from Salem so we enjoyed our first dose of Christmas music on the drive.

Big house, little house, back house and barn is a unique New England housing style that linked farm buildings into one structure. The Christmas Dove is housed in one of these buildings and provides a large area to create over thirty rooms of Christmas displays. Each room was decorated with a theme with hundreds of ornaments to peruse and purchase. Upstairs there were nostalgic Star Wars ornaments and model villages with working trains. The whole place takes about a half hour to see, and we gladly made our way through the entire labyrinth of rooms and corridors.

Dover is the next town over and is really popular with the kids from UNH. I like to think of it as Portsmouth’s little sibling of a town. We found a cute little breakfast and lunch diner to enjoy a meal. As we got back on the highway the dealership called to report the car was done which made it feel that the timing was perfect.

This adventure was a great kickstart to the holiday season! If you haven’t checked out https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/ I highly recommend it for getting out and seeing your own state like a tourist!