Monday morning another check indicated that the White Mountain area in northern NH would be partly cloudy. That’s supposed to be a beautiful drive, so with the weather OK I decided to give it a try. It would mean a full day of driving. This was the most distant destination in my pre-trip planning.
We ate breakfast at the Cup & Saucer Diner. That’s the place with pumpkin pancakes. Both Penny and I got them with “real Vermont maple syrup”. I guess the state makes them say that.
The drive up was uneventful. It was obvious that southern VT had only patchy color. The colors increased as we headed north and when we crossed over into NH there was abundant color with much more crimson than we had seen in VT. The only troubling part of the drive was that it was mostly cloudy all the way. The sun would peek out here and there but never stay.
The route took us by another covered bridge so we detoured to find it. My GPS requires a house address for an input. When I know the road but not the address I just put in “1”. That gets us to the beginning of the road. In this case the bridge was at the other end of the road so we had a nice scenic drive to get to the bridge. The drive was nice; the bridge a good one.
After 2-plus hours of driving (most of it quite scenic) we arrived at Lincoln, NH, the beginning of the Kancamagus Highway (Rt 112) in the White Mountain National Forest. There is a ranger station here where we picked up information and chatted with the female ranger. A suspension bridge was at this site and we ventured out through the crowded path (2 busloads of leaf-peepers) to cross the bouncy bridge and take our first pictures of the day. The bridge was big but still rocked with every step. Penny could not stay on it long or it would have spoiled the day. She got all the pictures she wanted.
The drive has several well-marked scenic locations—some had adequate parking, others were tight. I would hate to be here on a peak weekend. The traffic would spoil the visit. Here is the way a website describes the drive: “New Hampshire's National Scenic Byway with the tongue-twister name--the Kancamagus Highway--is New England's most superb scenic drive. You can call it "the Kanc" for short, as locals do, and you can revel in the pure pleasure of motoring through this thickly treed mountain gap, as more than a million visitors do each year. The 34-mile road cuts an east-west channel through the 800,000-acre White Mountain National Forest. When the dense stands of leafy deciduous trees exchange their summer greens for the dazzling shades of autumn, they are illuminated against the immutable evergreen of their coniferous counterparts, making this a most dramatic and beloved leaf-peeping route.”
Here is what we saw:
Hancock Overlook:
Pemigewasset:
Sugar Hill:
Upper Falls :
You can see by the pictures that sunlight was spotty. The lighting made good pictures difficult. We were patient and sometimes the sun graced us with its appearance. Other time we got great “moody” shots. Rain chased us and caught us several times.
On the drive home we drove through alternating heavy rain and bright sunshine—perfect rainbow weather. We spotted this full-arch rainbow. I pulled off the road and took pictures in the rain. Penny joined me.
Later I spotted 3 deer beside the road feasting in someone’s garden. I had forgotten how large the deer up here are compared to those in Florida. A little further down the road I saw 3 wild turkeys. Next we passed a lake and there on an island was someone’s home.
So we had more than just nice scenery to make the return trip interesting.
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