Day 60 Stowe to Littleton

After packing up and saying good bye to our hosts we headed for Littleton. This took us back via Bliss Hill Road and out the other side of Morrisville. The tree lined and canopied roads out of Morrisville were beautiful. It was a slow drive as we were constantly stopping to take photos (blame Vince). We also came across the only remaining covered railway bridge. The information sign at the bridge is a little out of date as it stated the bridge is still in use. If so, the train must become a hovertrain as the tracks start and finish about 3 metres either side of the bridge. During this drive we crossed from the state of Vermont into New Hampshire.

We arrived in Littleton and after getting maps and suggestions of walks from the local tourist bureau we stopped for a coffee before a walk around town. The cafe had a lovely deck on which to sit and look out on the nearby river and covered walk bridge. We ordered lattes but they looked more like cappuccinos minus the sprinkling of chocolate. It was nice coffee and it was hot.

We went for a walk along the main street of the town looking for possibly restaurants for dinner tonight before heading on to Franconia (Adam, the people are not frank here, in fact quite the opposite J). We stopped at the information centre in Franconia to work out where to see the colours and go for a trek. It is amazing, we were both speaking English but both had trouble understanding each other (Margaret and the local tourist person, that is. Vince had given up years ago!).

We headed off down I93 to the Franconia Notch State Park. At the turnoff there is a viewing area where you can see fantastic falls colour. It is full blown here, all shades of green, yellow, orange, maroon and red. Unfortunately, it was overcast so the colours were not as vibrant as they would have been with more sunshine. We went for a quick walk to Echo beach on Echo Lake.

We continued on our way through the state forest until we arrived at the carpark for the head trail for the Bald Mountain and Artists Bluff. We decided to walk up the track to Bald mountain. At the top we had a great view of the autumn colours but we were nearly blow off the top. We ended up doing the loop to Artists Bluff which also had great views. By the time we had returned to the car it was 5:30pm so we decided we had better head back to Littleton to check into our motel for the night.

We were lucky that our motel room had a fridge and microwave. The grocery store was just across the road so we purchased some frozen dinners, biscuits and spinach dip and headed back to our room for the night (a la carte dining). We did have a little plonk as well.