In Training in the National Parks - Part 2: White Mountains
Feeling good yet sore after our first one-day hike, we decided to continue our scenic walks programme in the White Mountains. After all, our South American trek would be four days non-stop and we didn't feel quite prepared for that yet. We left Bar Harbor in the morning and set off on another scenic drive, this time heading west from Maine back into New Hampshire. We entered the region on the Kancamagus Highway, which is not so much a highway as a scenic, narrow road that winds itself along a river through steep rocks and across a few mountain passes. We'd definitely left the the coastal hills behind and entered the mountains. A few ski resorts started to pop up alongside the road and the winter warning signs were becoming more serious and frequent. The White Mountains must get very white indeed in winter. Of course, we were driving through this landscape in a heat wave, which made all these warnings of snow and ice hazards slightly surreal, but it did allow us to stop off along various points and take a dip in the river. As the river was made up of melt water, we did not dip much more than our toes in it, but it was refreshing all the same.
We reached Lincoln mid-afternoon. There are a few small towns that can be used as a base from which to explore the White Mountains and Lincoln was the first town on our list of places to check out for accommodation. As it consisted of not much more than malls and a few hotels alongside a very wide road, we did not find anything to even stop and look at. Instead, we drove on to Woodstock, which was just around the corner, but with a lot more atmosphere. It too consisted of a few streets and some shops along the road, but the road was back to normal proportions (so you could easily walk from one building to the other rather than having to navigate various car parks) and the buildings looked a lot prettier. We decided to stop and check out some of the places to stay. It turned out that that was easier to do than we thought, as most of the buildings that looked like different B&Bs were all part of one place, The Woodstock Inn. The Inn had started a few decades ago as a small hotel in an old New England villa (clapboard, wrap around porch, immaculate garden with beautiful flowers). It then added an old train station building (the original Woodstock station building they were proud to note) in its back garden and started a microbrewery and country pub. And then it bought up a few more properties in the surrounding streets and turned them into additional accommodation. The idea of coming back every evening to a microbrewery with a huge terrace very much appealed to us and when they threw in a discount if we stayed for a few nights, we were easily sold. But which room to stay in?
Each building was done out in a different style so as to cater for a variety of audiences. We looked around rooms in most of the buildings and chose 'The Squirrels' Nest' room in a building called 'Cascade Lodge' next to the Inn that they had just finished refurbishing. 
The building's style can best be described as 'cool ski lodge': lots of wood, the odd antler (or indeed squirrel) on the wall, yet all done in quite a funky style. The rooms had all mod-cons including a huge television and DVD player, so we did temporarily join the Lincoln video club to rent a movie. After we'd checked out all the gadgets in the room, we had to move on to sample the beer in the beer garden. They had about 5 different beers on tap at any one time, and the seasonal summer ale was particularly nice. The bar staff all seemed involved in the brewing process and were very knowledgeable and passionate about their beers. We got to know them over the few days we stayed and when they discovered we lived in England, they got even more enthusiastic in telling us about their beer, as they use imported English yeast to brew it.
We ended up staying at the Woodstock in for about four or five nights. This was a couple more than we had originally planned, but we really enjoyed staying in one place for a bit, there was plenty to do, and the room turned out to be remarkably good value. This was because breakfast was included. Including breakfast is standard practice in most B&Bs and hotels, but nowhere has quite matched the Woodstock Inn when it comes to breakfasts - both in terms of scrumptiousness and value for money. The breakfast menu contained over 50 different breakfast dishes: eggs in any possible variety (including EggBeatersTM, which turned out to be egg whites with added nutrients - your learn something every day!), waffles, muffins, pancakes, salmon, and even things like steak. And we could choose any dish we liked from the menu. I am sure they told us this when we checked in, but when it came to breakfast time, we were so overwhelmed by the menu that we assumed we could only choose from the first page (the more standard continental or American breakfasts). Luckily, the table next to us went through a similar mental block and when we overheard you could have anything you wanted, we started to study the menu more carefully. Each breakfast started with orange juice, coffee and sticky buns with maple syrup. And then came the dish of your choice with a mountain of toast. We had omelettes, poached eggs in hollandaise sauce with different vegetables, fried egg with salsa on a tortilla and so on. The value-for-money bit came later in the day. No matter how hard we hiked, we did not really get hungry at lunchtime and needed nothing more than an apple and a packet of crisps to keep us going until dinner. This was an excellent deal!
To work off our breakfasts and continue our trek training programme, we explored the different parts of the White Mountains. We started off lightly by visiting the Flume Gorge, part of the Franconia State Park, where we did a shortish walk along a river cascading over rocks and working its way through a narrow gorge. The gorge used to have a stone wedged into it which gave people an interesting 'ceiling' to walk under or stand on, but this was washed away in a flood. Old photos allowed visitors to compare the gorge then and now. Another regional feature that has disappeared by the time we got there was the "Old Man of the Mountain": an ancient rock formation that looked like (you guessed it!) an old man's face. It is on coins, brochures, road signs and souvenirs all over the place. We drove past its alleged location twice, craned our necks, tried looking at the rocks from various angles, but could not make out this old man. It was only when we watched "the video" of the Franconia State Park that we realised it had fallen off, much to the anguish of the family that had been charged with its care for a number of generations.
One attraction that had stood the test of time was the Mount Washington Railway - one of the very few cog railways still in existence. An old-fashioned steam train (complete with coal furnaces, and steam whistles) took us up an impossibly steep slope at about four miles an hour to the top of Mount Washington. Plenty of time to enjoy the stunning scenery and wonder how they managed to build the railway. 
Our final 'light' activity was a visit to the Mount Washington Hotel to have a cocktail on their vast verandah and pondering the great and the good that gathered at this hotel for the Bretton-Woods conference, which established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and where a new post-war exchange rate system was devised. It was nice to have my International Finance course brought to life like this. The hotel was a beautiful old grand hotel, complete with the pianist playing away in the lobby - these international conferences know how to pick the good places.
After all this, it was time for some serious hiking. We decided to do one of the circular walks in the Franconia State Park, and it turned out to be one of the most difficult walks we have done so far. They keep getting more difficult - which is good practice, but slightly worrying: how difficult can it get? There are some seriously steep slopes in Franconia, and we hiked up one of them to reach a refuge that is part of the Appalachian trail, a 3500 km 'walk' that runs from Georgia to Maine on the east side of the United States. On the way, we walked through a forest with very high trees (the slopes are steep, the trees have to do something to make sure they get some light) and a beautiful lake. It was a cloudy day, and we had set off quite early, so the lake was partially hidden by the clouds and looked quite haunting. After watching some serious walkers swap stories near the refuge (whilst studiously ignoring mere mortals like us), we started our descent. Whilst the way up had been very steep, this turned out to have been the easy part of the walk. The way down was to follow a dry river bed down the mountain and involved clambering over rocks of various degrees of slipperiness (as there was no river yet, but everything was still very wet). But we made it down eventually and felt quite good about our achievement whilst walking back to the starting point along a thankfully flat biking trail at the foot of the mountain. At this stage, the sun had burnt off all the clouds and it had turned into another hot day. We therefore decided to finish off the day by going to the Cascade Park across the road from our lodge. This was the local park for Woodstock, but with a twist. Rather than having the usual grass, walking paths, and a couple of swings, Cascae Park contained a river flowing over solid rock: the Pemigewasset River. At this point in the river, some big boulders had come to rest and the river had carved out a few pools in the rock, which made it a great place to dangle your legs in the river or go for a cold swim in one of the rock pools (this was another melt water river after all). We had a great time looking at the river cascading by and watching some kids jump on rubber tyre tubes and use the rocks as a giant slide. We helped 'rescue' a couple of kids who took a wrong turn on the 'slide' and went head first into a plunge pool. They were never in any danger, just very bewildered when they popped up, which I have to admit was quite amusing.
This was our final day in Woodstock, and with another practice trek achieved, it was time to move on and explore somewhere else on our round trip of New England. Next stop: Vermont.
We reached Lincoln mid-afternoon. There are a few small towns that can be used as a base from which to explore the White Mountains and Lincoln was the first town on our list of places to check out for accommodation. As it consisted of not much more than malls and a few hotels alongside a very wide road, we did not find anything to even stop and look at. Instead, we drove on to Woodstock, which was just around the corner, but with a lot more atmosphere. It too consisted of a few streets and some shops along the road, but the road was back to normal proportions (so you could easily walk from one building to the other rather than having to navigate various car parks) and the buildings looked a lot prettier. We decided to stop and check out some of the places to stay. It turned out that that was easier to do than we thought, as most of the buildings that looked like different B&Bs were all part of one place, The Woodstock Inn. The Inn had started a few decades ago as a small hotel in an old New England villa (clapboard, wrap around porch, immaculate garden with beautiful flowers). It then added an old train station building (the original Woodstock station building they were proud to note) in its back garden and started a microbrewery and country pub. And then it bought up a few more properties in the surrounding streets and turned them into additional accommodation. The idea of coming back every evening to a microbrewery with a huge terrace very much appealed to us and when they threw in a discount if we stayed for a few nights, we were easily sold. But which room to stay in?
Each building was done out in a different style so as to cater for a variety of audiences. We looked around rooms in most of the buildings and chose 'The Squirrels' Nest' room in a building called 'Cascade Lodge' next to the Inn that they had just finished refurbishing. The building's style can best be described as 'cool ski lodge': lots of wood, the odd antler (or indeed squirrel) on the wall, yet all done in quite a funky style. The rooms had all mod-cons including a huge television and DVD player, so we did temporarily join the Lincoln video club to rent a movie. After we'd checked out all the gadgets in the room, we had to move on to sample the beer in the beer garden. They had about 5 different beers on tap at any one time, and the seasonal summer ale was particularly nice. The bar staff all seemed involved in the brewing process and were very knowledgeable and passionate about their beers. We got to know them over the few days we stayed and when they discovered we lived in England, they got even more enthusiastic in telling us about their beer, as they use imported English yeast to brew it.We ended up staying at the Woodstock in for about four or five nights. This was a couple more than we had originally planned, but we really enjoyed staying in one place for a bit, there was plenty to do, and the room turned out to be remarkably good value. This was because breakfast was included. Including breakfast is standard practice in most B&Bs and hotels, but nowhere has quite matched the Woodstock Inn when it comes to breakfasts - both in terms of scrumptiousness and value for money. The breakfast menu contained over 50 different breakfast dishes: eggs in any possible variety (including EggBeatersTM, which turned out to be egg whites with added nutrients - your learn something every day!), waffles, muffins, pancakes, salmon, and even things like steak. And we could choose any dish we liked from the menu. I am sure they told us this when we checked in, but when it came to breakfast time, we were so overwhelmed by the menu that we assumed we could only choose from the first page (the more standard continental or American breakfasts). Luckily, the table next to us went through a similar mental block and when we overheard you could have anything you wanted, we started to study the menu more carefully. Each breakfast started with orange juice, coffee and sticky buns with maple syrup. And then came the dish of your choice with a mountain of toast. We had omelettes, poached eggs in hollandaise sauce with different vegetables, fried egg with salsa on a tortilla and so on. The value-for-money bit came later in the day. No matter how hard we hiked, we did not really get hungry at lunchtime and needed nothing more than an apple and a packet of crisps to keep us going until dinner. This was an excellent deal!
To work off our breakfasts and continue our trek training programme, we explored the different parts of the White Mountains. We started off lightly by visiting the Flume Gorge, part of the Franconia State Park, where we did a shortish walk along a river cascading over rocks and working its way through a narrow gorge. The gorge used to have a stone wedged into it which gave people an interesting 'ceiling' to walk under or stand on, but this was washed away in a flood. Old photos allowed visitors to compare the gorge then and now. Another regional feature that has disappeared by the time we got there was the "Old Man of the Mountain": an ancient rock formation that looked like (you guessed it!) an old man's face. It is on coins, brochures, road signs and souvenirs all over the place. We drove past its alleged location twice, craned our necks, tried looking at the rocks from various angles, but could not make out this old man. It was only when we watched "the video" of the Franconia State Park that we realised it had fallen off, much to the anguish of the family that had been charged with its care for a number of generations.
One attraction that had stood the test of time was the Mount Washington Railway - one of the very few cog railways still in existence. An old-fashioned steam train (complete with coal furnaces, and steam whistles) took us up an impossibly steep slope at about four miles an hour to the top of Mount Washington. Plenty of time to enjoy the stunning scenery and wonder how they managed to build the railway. Our final 'light' activity was a visit to the Mount Washington Hotel to have a cocktail on their vast verandah and pondering the great and the good that gathered at this hotel for the Bretton-Woods conference, which established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and where a new post-war exchange rate system was devised. It was nice to have my International Finance course brought to life like this. The hotel was a beautiful old grand hotel, complete with the pianist playing away in the lobby - these international conferences know how to pick the good places.After all this, it was time for some serious hiking. We decided to do one of the circular walks in the Franconia State Park, and it turned out to be one of the most difficult walks we have done so far. They keep getting more difficult - which is good practice, but slightly worrying: how difficult can it get? There are some seriously steep slopes in Franconia, and we hiked up one of them to reach a refuge that is part of the Appalachian trail, a 3500 km 'walk' that runs from Georgia to Maine on the east side of the United States. On the way, we walked through a forest with very high trees (the slopes are steep, the trees have to do something to make sure they get some light) and a beautiful lake. It was a cloudy day, and we had set off quite early, so the lake was partially hidden by the clouds and looked quite haunting. After watching some serious walkers swap stories near the refuge (whilst studiously ignoring mere mortals like us), we started our descent. Whilst the way up had been very steep, this turned out to have been the easy part of the walk. The way down was to follow a dry river bed down the mountain and involved clambering over rocks of various degrees of slipperiness (as there was no river yet, but everything was still very wet). But we made it down eventually and felt quite good about our achievement whilst walking back to the starting point along a thankfully flat biking trail at the foot of the mountain. At this stage, the sun had burnt off all the clouds and it had turned into another hot day. We therefore decided to finish off the day by going to the Cascade Park across the road from our lodge. This was the local park for Woodstock, but with a twist. Rather than having the usual grass, walking paths, and a couple of swings, Cascae Park contained a river flowing over solid rock: the Pemigewasset River. At this point in the river, some big boulders had come to rest and the river had carved out a few pools in the rock, which made it a great place to dangle your legs in the river or go for a cold swim in one of the rock pools (this was another melt water river after all). We had a great time looking at the river cascading by and watching some kids jump on rubber tyre tubes and use the rocks as a giant slide. We helped 'rescue' a couple of kids who took a wrong turn on the 'slide' and went head first into a plunge pool. They were never in any danger, just very bewildered when they popped up, which I have to admit was quite amusing.
This was our final day in Woodstock, and with another practice trek achieved, it was time to move on and explore somewhere else on our round trip of New England. Next stop: Vermont.
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