The Curse of the Blue Figurine not only introduce us to new characters – in this case, Johnny Dixon and Professor Childermass – but to new landscapes. Gone are the flat farmlands of Michigan and river sights and sounds of southeast Minnesota; in their place are the majestic White Mountains:

"For some time they had driven through rather blah, ordinary, slightly hilly country. Then in the distance Johnny began to see rumpled blue shapes. Now they were among those shapes. Great humped masses rose above the road. Trees marched up the sides of the mountains or bristled on their ridges -- pines and maples for the most part, with here and there the startling white form of a birch tree [144]."

Johnny and the professor live in Duston Heights, Massachusetts, based somewhat on the area of New England that Bellairs himself had moved to in 1970 when he took up residence in Haverhill. A great many of Bellairs’ writings in the Dixon series figure in the scenery and landscapes from this region and it’s not until one plots the destinations on a map that one sees just how closely contained the adventures really are.

Bellairs paints a convincing canvas, pointing out many of the well-known touristy stops, such as the dramatic peaks in the Presidential Range, named after U.S. Presidents: Mounts Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Washington. Mount Washington is New Hampshire’s tallest peak at 6,288 feet in the heart of the White Mountain National Forest. The 52-acre Mount Washington State Park surrounds the summit, where visitors will find a multitude of old and modern buildings, once known as the “City Among the Clouds.” The fastest wind-gust ever recorded were 231 miles-per-hour, atop Mount Washington.

"They drove on, through Franconia Notch, a gap in the mountains, and into the little village of Franconia. Then they came to the Gale River, a cheerful, sparkly little stream that ran nosily over a bed of smooth white stones [146]."

Franconia Notch is a spectacular mountain pass traversed by a unique parkway that extends from the Flume Gorge at the south to Echo Lake at the north. For eight miles, Interstate 93 winds between the high peaks of the Kinsman and Franconia mountain ranges.

"At the end of the day, tired and sunburned and happy, the two travelers found themselves standing outside a motel called Hag View Cottages. The name of the place came from the big tourist attraction in the area: the Hag. The Hag was a curious rock formation high up on the side of Hellbent Mountain. If you looked at the mass of shelving rock from the correct angle, you saw the face of an old witch. People came from all over the country to gape at the Hag and take pictures of it and buy souvenirs in the various gift shops in the area. Everything for miles around was name for the Hag: there were the Hag Kumfy Kabins, there was the Haggis Baggis Bar and Grill, there was Hag Lake, and there was Hagtooth Harry's Bear Ranch, featuring trained bears that did all sorts of fascinating tricks [147]."

The Hag is Bellairs’ take of one of New Hampshire’s prized symbols, the 40-foot-tall Old Man of the Mountain, or the Great Stone Face, immortalized by American authors Nathaniel Hawthorne and Daniel Webster, the latter of which famously noted:

"Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoe makers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men."

The Old Man was a natural stone formation on the side of Cannon Mountain; first reported in 1805, it went on to become the official New Hampshire State Emblem . Looming 1,200 feet above Profile Lake, the weather took its tole on the rocks, many of which were eventually held in place with steel cables and turnbuckles. Sadly, on May 3, 2003, just like the Hag, the Old Man fell into the waters below. We doubt there was some sort of supernatural earthquake involved, however.

With the Hag’s demise, Professor Childermass can’t help but laugh at the numerous attractions whose names have suddenly become irrelevant [180-1], especially Hagtooth Harry's Bear Ranch. That, too, is based on a real White Mountain destination, Clark’s Trading Post near North Woodstock. In 1928, Florence and Ed Clark opened a roadside attraction for White Mountain travelers called “Ed Clark’s Eskimo Sled Dog Ranch,” featured guided tours of their pure-bred Eskimo sled dogs and artifacts from the far North. The post purchased their first Black Bear in 1931 and, since 1949, black bears have been performing tricks for captivated audiences of both children and adults.