Wednesday, October 8, 2008

New Hampshire Trip

New Hampshire Fall Trip

This is my first trip to see fall foliage in New Hampshire. We went to the White Mountains in New Hampshire to see fall colors, guess we made a good decision to go there to look at fall colors. Trip was planned within two days, with the logistics of car, accommodation and food were taken care in 2 days. We hit the road @5 in the evening on Friday, the customary round trip after driving to the first stop sign to get something what we missed to take was done this time too. We consider doing that as a good luck at the start of the trip, this time the culprit forgot to bring the music cds. Drive up to New Hampshire was good, with some discussions and good music. We stopped for our dinner in a rest area in Connecticut. It was decided earlier that we would cook(that we doesn’t include any bachelors) some food and take it up there for our dinner, which turned out to be a good decision except the fact that we ended up eating our food in the freezing temperature outside.

There were quite a lot of cops on the road and lot of people were pulled over for over speeding or other violations, we were extra careful on not to get caught. We reached the place where we stayed at around 1.30 in the night. I wanted to go and take some photos early in the morning of fall colors, early morning and the evening are the best time to take photos, I set my phone alarm to 6 A.M and retired to bed. All my buddies were up playing cards, looks like they had decided to play a prank on me. Switched off all the lights and adjusted the time of my phone to 5.30 A.M after 10 mins I dozed off to sleep. They were smart to the change the alarms of most of the phones in the room. Alarm started going off, I didn’t feel like I slept for a long time, I woke up and saw how it looked outside, it was dark, I still decided to go ahead with my plans. I brushed my teeth and washed my face, came out to put my shoes and leave, the room was bright and everyone was up, it took sometime for the reality to sink in that they have played a prank on me. It was a good way to start the trip, rest of the trip was also lot of fun.


I went to take some early morning photos on Saturday, it was cloudy and it spoiled the start. We went to Franconia Notch and Flumes Gorge during the day. We had to trek in freezing temperatures up in mountains in Franconia Notch. I got some good colorful photos at the flumes gorge, there was lot of deliberation and discussion on whether we have to walk to the flumes gorge which is a 0.75 mile trek or go in a bus, I was up for walking and finally convinced everyone to do that. I don’t think any one regretted walking to the flumes gorge. Dinner for the night was suppose to be prepared by the bachelors but a better cook took over the mantle from us and cooked a tasty chicken curry for us. I was very tired after seeing for the whole day through the view finder of my camera, I retired to bed very early on that night.

Sunday we decided to go to Mount Washington, there was lot of hype on how difficult it is to drive in that road. I have been to quite a lot of hill stations in India, compared to that this Mount Washington drive is nothing. They are marketing the place very good, which attracts so many people towards this spot. They had restrictions on how many persons can go in a car in a van etc etc. Two of my buddies dropped out and waited in the lower base of Mount Washington while we guys drove up. I don’t regret driving up there, the colors were really good and I got some really nice fall color photos.

We drove via Boston when returning back to Scranton, we went to a restaurant called Fire and Ice. They had a very good concept, it’s a buffet, they had all the raw materials like vegetables, meat, egg, sauce etc as a Buffet. You have to go and pick things in a bowl and give it to the cook who will cook it in front of your eyes. Cook won’t add anything extra apart from what you have got there so the taste is based on what you take to the cook for eating. I enjoyed it up there. It was a good trip. You can see the photos of the trip here