Saturday and our last full day in the White Mountains brought more bright sunshine. Jill woke early and even stepped out of the cabin at 7.30am to take a photo of the view in early morning light. Her view was, it's a shorts day - not bad for the end of September and quite a change from a few days ago when the conditions were too cold to even attempt the Mount Washington climb! Carolyn, who we'd met on the Cascade Brook Trail had suggested the Welch-Dickey Loop a...

This morning we busied ourselves writing blog updates. This was despite the weather being pleasant again: partly because we needed to catch up on a few days' entries but also because we needed a gentler day after the demands of the previous day's hike. We typically author alternate days and edit each other's draft checking for typos and the inclusion of things we think should feature based on our different perspectives. Usually these lead to small amendments but ...

Thursday dawned beautiful! At 7:30am there was a frost on the ground but also clear blue skies: a great day for a big hike. We had a couple of choices from the walks recommended by Carolyn and decided on the more strenuous and challenging as this looked like a good day to get up high. And high we got! We started off following the Falling Waters Trail to Little Haystack Mountain (4,760ft). This trail was described in our trail guide as having river crossings and ...

Our cabin was cool rather than cold to wake up in and the views outside were overcast so nothing too ambitious made sense for the day. We ate breakfast, prepared a lamb casserole in the slow cooker we found, put together sandwiches and again donned our warmest gear before heading a little north to the Franconia Notch area where we'd identified a walk with no summit climbs and plenty of river stretches to provide interest in another tree-surrounded day. Our trail...

Back to Welsh's Restaurant for another hearty breakfast. Today we spotted a sign that amused us: "Unattended children will be given an espresso and a free puppy" - sounds a great idea and we thought perhaps we could claim four free puppies as our children are technically unattended by us! Then it was back on the road to North Woodstock where we were to meet up with our new swap hosts, Ken and Carol, for lunch at Cascade Coffeehouse. We had plenty of time to ma...