The White Mountains of NH

View of Franconia notch
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Before leaving Vermont, we made one last stop in the smallest capital city in the U.S. – Montpelier, Vermont. Population: around 8,000 +/-!! It’s another charming small town that happens to also have a culinary institute. We enjoyed a great breakfast at a local diner before moving on to northern New Hampshire. In NH, we planted ourselved on the north end of the White Mountains area.

We hadn’t golfed yet on this road trip and found a great course south of Franconia when we arrived in town and had a great round at Owl’s Nest golf club. Our next day was spent hitting a few hiking trails in the area. First a short climb up to artists bluff, which took all of fifteen minutes but rewards you with great views of the Franconia Notch – great cost/benefit! We next hiked up to Mt. Willard which gave us great views of Mt. Washington and Crawford Notch. None of the mountains are very high, but with the carved notches below, the views are quite stunning.

A little golf at Owl's Nest
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Our highlight was seeing a moose as we’ve never seen one before (doesn’t compare maybe to our safari sightings in South Africa, but still!) and this is moose country so we were hoping to see at least one. He unfortunately was at the side of the highway and we didn’t get to see him up close or for very long, but he was huge.

This ended our short stay in New Hampshire – Vermont was still our favorite of the two.

Next on to Maine….