New Hampshire Vistas

We began the fourth day of our New England trip with a stop at the Portland Head Light before driving west out of Maine. The lighthouse, built in 1791, has been carefully preserved -- along with other bits of history from the interim. (One of the odder details was an old-timey set of pay-to-use binoculars, complete with instructions on just what this fancy gadget could do and how you operated it.) While you can only go inside the lighthouse itself on rare, special days (and this was not one of those), we still got a beautiful view of the coastline at Cape Elizabeth.

From there, we drove into New Hampshire and visited Diana's Baths. The series of small waterfalls is nestled back in the woods, a short half-mile hike in. It was also near the Cathedral Ledge Distillery, a spirits maker in a spacious, newly built barn, where we stopped for a few samples. The surprising hit was their horseradish vodka, which we sort of tried "on a dare." Milder than we expected, we were told that people liked it for making Bloody Maries (which neither my husband nor I drink... but we could see it). I also tried their version of aquavit, a spirit I must confess I'd never heard of until recently (in the board game Distilled). At some point, I suppose I'll have to try the genuine, Scandinavian article.

For the next hour-plus, we drove along the Kancamagus Highway, a 30-mile-plus stretch between Conway and Lincoln that's The Spot for watching the leaves turn in the fall. It turned out that unfortunately, we were a couple of weeks too early to get the whole show. But even with only a few splashes of yellow and orange, the drive was truly one of the most beautiful areas of our entire trip. It was easy to see how this scenic byway got its reputation.

We stopped for lunch at the Woodstock Inn Brewery, a combination craft beer maker and bed and breakfast. (We actually even looked into staying there at one point in trip planning, but the two-night minimum didn't fit with our goal to hit all the New England states in the course of the trip.) We'd find out on Facebook that people we know had visited that very inn/brewery, so I guess it's the place to go when you visit New Hampshire. I imagine its proximity to Kancamagus Highway doesn't hurt.

We spent the rest of our afternoon hiking at Flume Gorge, a particular spot in Franconia Notch State Park where a deep natural gorge has been cut into a forested, fairy-like nook. The 2-mile round trip hike to see it takes you by a covered bridge, to some scenic views of the White Mountains, and by other lovely sites.

And while we'd pass on staying at the Woodstock Inn Brewery, we did decide we wanted to try one bed and breakfast along our journey, and found it that evening at the Sunset Hill House. If we were golfers, we might have looked into the 9-hole course out front. Had we not been looking to head back out for dinner, we might have appreciated the stunning view out back. (Though we saw it the next morning before we left; I'll come back to that in the next trip post.)

Dinner was the Little Grille, a rather unassuming bar and grill in the area. Maple syrup is a Vermont thing, but New Hampshire was close enough to get in on the action, and the Little Grille was happy to serve me a delicious, sticky burger with maple-glazed bacon and maple aioli. They also offered fresh-made caipirinhas, a cocktail my husband had encountered on a past trip to Brazil. So, mixed in one of those, I tried my second spirit of the day I'd never had before, cachaça. A tasty drink, and a nice cap to one a full day.

Next up, Vermont!