Meandering in the White Mountains of New Hampshire

As a kid, my family used to occasionally vacation in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I think it must have been that there is quite a bit to do with kids (Santa’s Village, the Cog Train up Mount Washington, the Flume, Lost River gorge trail (which was a family favorite), North Conway, etc.) and possibly because my grandfather had an affinity for New Hampshire having gone to Dartmouth College. Since then, however, the White Mountains have mostly been a thoroughfare for me, passing from Vermont to northern Maine for work many (many) times many (many) years ago.

So, again enroute between Vermont and Maine, we stopped off in the White Mountains but this time, stayed for a couple of nights. We stayed at the Mountain View Resort which does, in fact, have stunning mountain views which can be observed from the magnificent front porch sitting in an Adirondack chair. They have a 9-hole golf course on property (closed while we were there in mid-May), llamas and lambs for the kids and axe throwing for the adults. Those are the plusses. Despite the spectacular appearance of the hotel from outside, the inside is kind of… meh and tired and the food service was only medium, but for the price we were paying to stay our expectations were set a bit higher. Nothing an upgrade and a good general manager couldn’t fix, but a property in such a spectacular setting deserves that upgrade (I will say, however, that our complaint about them mysteriously putting us right on the path between the wedding reception ballroom to the stairs on a rocking Saturday night was handled very professionally and perfectly by the Sunday morning manager).

Also, caution to the stayer: there is a network of walking and mountain bike trails behind, which we’ve lovingly nicknamed the “tick fields” and we are now on a lyme-disease watch after discovering several ticks on our legs after a stroll about the grounds. All scrubbed down and inspected for ticks and bites, we headed out the next day to check out some other non-tick-infested trails.

We drove south through Franconia Notch to check out the Franconia Falls trail. It is not terribly long and mostly flat (gently sloping upward) with a wide trail along the east branch of the Pemigewasset River. Imminent heavy rain was forecast, so we fortuitously turned before reaching the falls at our appointed turn time.

We stopped off at the Gypsy Cafe in Lincoln, gateway to the west side of the Kancamagus Highway, and were very happy with our choice. We had salads, but everything coming out of the kitchen looked fantastic, including their specialty grilled cheese fondue with an ancho-apricot dipping sauce (reviewed here) which we definitely would have ordered had we not been trying to cut our calories a bit after so many weeks in hotels and B&Bs.

Sated and happy, we drove back through Franconia Notch and stopped off at the Old Man of the Mountain Historical site. As a kid, I remember my father pointing him out as we would come around a bend on the highway and being amazed as a cluster of non-descript rocks would transform into the familiar face from the highway signs and license plates. Since he fell in 2003, they have constructed a somewhat ingenious way of still “seeing” him. You stand behind these metal replicas of his face at a distance marked for your height and magically he appears, even crisper than he did while your father pointed him out from a car speeding by.

From there, we went to check out the Bretton Woods Mount Washington Hotel, site of the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference. We chose to stay at the Mountain View instead because of the price differential, better Booking.com rating (typically a very reliable source) and because we’d read that the Mountain View was the best place to stay in New Hampshire in a Conde Nast article. We would likely stay again (requesting a different room at check-in), but the lobby area of the Mount Washington Hotel made us want to sit and relax in front of the roaring fire as the rain rolled in.

Pre-arrival to our hotel, we also checked out a loop we found on All Trails called “Tunnel, Coronary Hills and Ammonoosuc River Loop” just to stretch our legs a bit. It was an easy walk, mostly through thick woods and a section of it is part of the Bretton Woods nordic trail system.

All told, we enjoyed our time a great deal if for nothing else, to check out the views of the majestic White Mountains around us. Now, fingers crossed, no lyme disease.