Day 62 North Conway

Completely different day today. Sunshine everywhere! However, it was 4°C at 8am. So rugging up was the order of the day. Well at least until we had gone for a walk and got the blood flowing.

First order of the day was a coffee for Vince (actually 2! just to clear the head) and tea for Margaret.

We were on the road by 9am (or thereabouts; we were on holidays for goodness sake!)

First stop was to pay US$3 for a day permit at the ranger's station. Stuffed up again as we should have got a weekly permit for US$5. Now we need to spend another US$3 for a permit for tomorrow. High finance! (Postscript - we did not need the day permit for tomorrow so all good!)

On the road and we were heading up the Kancamagus Highway for our first stop, being the Albany covered bridge. It was quite good but had been rebuilt in recent history. It was built to carry a loaded hay cart, being the width and height of this cart. In the same area we took the Boulder loop trail. It was a circuit that had a couple of ledges that had excellent views. Margaret checked out the views from a respectable distance. The colour was fantastic. To see flaming red covered trees growing from cracks on mountain ledges was great.

After our walk we proceeded up the Kancamagus Highway to the historic Russell Colbath house. The site contains a large barn that was rebuilt in the old style, using timber pegs instead of nails to hold the timber together. The timber was sourced from the local area. The house was built in the mid 1800's. It was still being occupied by a daughter of the original family until her death in 1930. It was then purchased by a couple as a summer home. It was sold to the National Forestry around 1968. The house is open to the public from Memorial Day (May) to Columbus Day (10 Oct 2016) so we were able to inspect the ground floor, including the kitchen, family room and master bedroom. We were fortunate to taste some ginger cake that had been cooked in a dutch oven in the kitchen fire place.

We headed further up the Kancamagus Highway to the Sugar Hill overlook and then headed back to Bear Notch Road for the Crawford Notch State Forest. Again we were driving past colourful landscapes, checking out the scenery as it was rather overcast the previous day. We ended up turning around at the carpark for Arethusa Falls (tomorrow's hike) and drove to Jackson which is a nice small town. After some further driving around (and it was getting late) we decided we would purchase a couple of muffins and "scoff" them (Marg's wording) with a coffee at the hostel where we were staying.

That night we caught up with a couple from Adelaide as well as a guy from The Netherlands and another guy from California. It was an interesting conversation, comparing notes on the New England colour as well as walks we had been on. All this to the background music from a turntable and extensive LP collection - Eagles, Beatles, Bee Gees, Neil Diamond, Fleetwood Mac as well as classical and oldies like Bing Crosby. (For young whipper snappers reading this LP's are the vinyl records used in the good old days to listen to music)

After some further updates to our blog we decided to hit the bed as we wanted to getaway for an early start for tomorrow.