Vacation Hiking-Day #1

What better thing to do with an October vacation in New Hampshire than to hike?

Dad arrived last night to accompany Brynna, Jasper, and me on our wanderings this week. This morning we set off up I-93 toward Franconia Notch. We started with breakfast at Polly's Pancake Parlor. This is a spectacular diner where the waitstaff make your pancakes to order and the default option is real maple syrup, none of that fake crap.

Brynna enjoyed herself, as you can see:


We shared some blueberry whole wheat pancakes:


Brynna was very interested in this little horse outside the restaurant.


Then we headed toward Cannon Mountain, a ski area that is also one of the New Hampshire 4000-footers, where there are also some shorter hikes. We chose a loop over Artists' Bluff and Bald Mountain. Here we are on our way out:


And on top of the bluff (Jasper and Brynna are apparently playing peek-a-boo):


On top of Bald Mountain, I let Jasper run around free and borrowed his leash to use for Brynna so that she could do some exploring.


You can see the ski area in the background of this photo, with the lovely foliage:


Brynna and I also got some quality mother-daughter time at the peak. The distant mountain over my head is Mount Moosilauke, Dartmouth's mountain...which is also where Alex and I had our first unofficial date and fell for each other over Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.


It's important to get some grandfather-granddaughter time, too:


Right after we took the above photo, we saw a rainstorm coming in fast from the north. We packed up in a hurry and scrambled down the rock slabs around the summit, getting under the trees and onto dirt trail just in time. The skies opened up and suddenly we were getting whacked with hail! We got Brynna's little canopy up but the rest of us were rather bedraggled by the time we returned to the road 15 minutes later. It stopped raining just about then, and we hustled back down the road to warm up our hands in the car. Now, I have always had a lot of respect for the bad weather potential in the White Mountains, but I have to say that I did not bring all my foul weather gear on this little loop that took us a maximum of 30 minutes from the car at any given time. Especially with the baby, never again!


On the way home, we stopped in Lincoln at the fabulous Mountain Wanderer bookstore, picking up a couple of new guidebooks and some maps.

All in all, a very successful first day. More to come!