Day 61 Littleton to North Conway

We woke to an overcast and showery day. Setting off down the interstate to Lincoln, we were at the start of the Kancamangus Highway going through to Conway. This is a one of the roads we had read lots of reviews stating "a must do drive". It is very pretty and has lots of places to stop and go for a walk on marked trails. As you would expect with the "Falls colour meter" at full throttle, there were tourists everywhere. It was also a 3 day weekend with Columbus Day tomorrow (Monday)

With the rainy weather and lots of people on the road and full trail carparks we decided to forgo the walking today and do the scenic drive we had planned for tomorrow in the hope of improved weather conditions tomorrow.

Driving all the way to the other end of the highway at Conway we stopped at one of the National Forest Information centres where we received some very helpful advice. (in referring to our notes it was basically what we had planned for the next day).

Heading back up the Kancamangus Highway several miles we turned onto Bear Notch Road (this road closes in winter) and drove to Bartlett and then turned onto White Mountain Trail. We stopped at historic Willey House. This was the site of a land slide in 1825 where the family were all killed when trying to escape the landslide. The tragedy was that had they stayed in the house they would have survived as it was not touched.

Driving on through Crawford Notch (they like their Notches in New England- more commonly known as a pass) we stopped at Bretton Wood. This is a large hotel built in the 1800's. Very palatial. We were going to have a coffee but as they were charging resort prices we decided to drive on to Gorham, only 20 minutes away.

It was worth the drive to have a nice coffee. Although only one real café in this small town (we don't count McDonalds or Dunkin Donuts) the coffee was nice and the muffins (Vince- lemon poppyseed, Margaret - spiced pumpkin) were delicious. Without tasting the coffee, the queues in the café were sufficient evidence that we had made the right decision.

From Gorham it was a 20 mile drive to North Conway. Although we arrived around 4.00pm it appeared we had arrived at peak hour. The traffic and number of people walking in the main street were due to the long weekend and inclement weather. There was a marquis with outdoor gear on sale so we stopped to look for the waterproof over pants similar to what we wore when walking on the glacier in the Rockies. (Vince has been checking these out whenever we see an outdoor store) No luck it was all ski gear. We are in one of the premier ski areas of New Hampshire.

Continuing on down the road we came to the Hostel where we were to stay for the next 3 nights. We are back at the laptop catching up on our blog. Now it is Marg's turn to upload the photos.