Retired Trippin' – The White Mountains of New Hampshire

And the rains continued. We found our way to a campground near Twin Mountain, NH with relative ease. The closest town of any size was Littleton. Hal-a-lou-ya….it was large enough to have both a Home Depot and a Lowe's. I may survive after all. The White's are very similar to the Smokey's in that they are completely covered by forest but they tend give you the feel of the Rockies with their height. We spent a day exploring the Franconia Notch (we would call it Franconia Pass). There are several places to snow ski in the area and had all the rain we had experienced had been snow I'm certain it would have been measured in yards instead of feet or inches. In the notch we found the Flume Gorge cut into the mountain with a trail through it. There was a very nice bike trial that ran about 10 miles from the top of the notch to the town of Lincoln but we were not able to take advantage of it. The reason was two-fold….first my back was continuing to give me problems and secondly because it was all downhill. The downhill part would have been a hoot but the return trip would have seen me selling the bike and buying a bus ticket back to the car. There are also numerous hiking trails in the area. Another adventure involved driving to the top of Mt. Washington via the "auto road" on its east side. The most difficult part of that adventure was finding a day that was clear enough. Even on good days its peak is usually fog-bound. There is a cog railway that goes up the west side of the mountain and we had visited there on a previous day. Mt. Washington claims to have the worst weather in the world. On April 12, 1934 their instruments measured a wind velocity of 231 mph. This is reputed to be the highest wind ever observed by man. As you will see in one of the pictures, one of the older, original buildings is held in place by chains. All in all the road was in good shape except it was barely wide enough for 2 vehicles. It was paved right to the edge and there were no guard rails. I thought Karen was going to have to use a large pry bar to remove my hands from the steering wheel. Most of the little towns have a downtown area with a variety of shops to explore so we visited a few of them in the process of moving around the area. North Conway was the largest town we had visited in a while and it's claim to fame were the small variety of factory outlet stores scattered about the southern end of town. The rest of the remainder of the week was spent relaxing, doing laundry, dealing with minor repairs, etc., etc. Cell service has been spotty at best. To make a call we had to drive 3 or 4 miles up the highway to get a signal. We highly recommend the area as a place to visit.

Bill & Karen Hopkins