New Hampshire Trip

Once in a while, everything goes really well on a trip. This was one of them. The weather was beautiful (well, a tad warm for early October, but better than freezing the bejezus out of yourself), the things we did and saw were really, really fun. We stayed in Conway, New Hampshire. To some, it's known for loads of outlets. If that's all you think of Conway, it's a shame you haven't wandered around. We found covered bridges, beautiful scenery. We spent a day at the Fryeburg (Maine) fair. It's once of the last serious livestock fairs (there are more livestock than rides). They had 3 barns of just jaw dropping gorgeous draft horses (Clydesdales and Percherons, for example). The kids loved to feel a wooly sheep, and we were all amazed at how THICK their coat of wool is! We saw cows, pigs, sheep, donkeys, etc. Morgan fell in love with harness racing. Not that she bet, but she did have fun picking out the "speedy" horse pre-race. We happened upon an amazing spot to view the race - not in the grandstand, but right on the fence in the first turn behind the machinery aisle.

We spent the next day quite by chance on top of Mount Washington, which is the East Coast's highest mountain top at 6,288 feet. We couldn't take our dually up the road, since it was too wide, so we all piled into Grandpa's truck (dogs and all!) and went up. It turned out to be just fun to make the drive all together. The view from the top is in clouds or fogged in 60% of the time, we hit the 40% that was clear. YEAH! The kids have decided they want to hike it next year, I said that's fine, but we need to do some practice before committing to a 4 hour (one way) hike!

Our final full day, Sunday, was spent on a fall foliage steam train ride. We said to heck with it and spent an extra $5 per ticket and booked the first class car. WOW! It was the best $$ ever spent, we had these gorgeous wicker chairs to sit in and face the window... There were maybe 25 people in our train car, vs. 100 packed into the regular coach car. Again, the over night rain had cleared and the sun came out in time for our ride, and a fabulous time was had by all. We stopped in town and had some amazing fire-cooked pizza and walked through a few shops in town.

Here are a few pix - most of them are on my 35mm which will get developed and posted later this week.

Our camp site... we all LOVED being tucked under the white pines.
Dylan catching minnows in the river behind our campsite. If you look closely, you can see how still he sat - the minnows schooled right around him! Morgan and Dylan swimming in the river. Did I mention the river was REALLY COLD???

One of Morgan's "speedy" horses at the track. Note the mountains behind the fairgrounds... I felt like I was in Colorado!