Tourists in New Hampshire

Saturday's highlight was an evening Moose Tour out of Gorham, driving north along the Androscoggin River and eventually into Maine for a brief bit.  It was an adventure in more ways than one.  Our driver was a down-to-earth local lady who told good stories, gave us lots of moose-related information, and filled us in on the gossip for the area.  She was pretty funny, and her driving was entertaining too.

One of the moose-related show-and-tell items at the start:

Right off the bat we got a quick glimpse of a moose heading from a wallow into the woods.  Cool!  As the sun set, we didn't see any more animals for a while.  But we caught a nice sunset at Umbagog Lake:

After it got dark the fun began.  We saw a moose and her calf, very exciting.  Also a bull right next to the road.  I think we saw a total of 8 or 9 moose that evening and learned a lot about what to look for, and more importantly, how to hopefully never hit one.

I managed to capture one moose sighting on video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVP8JU2JWh0&feature=youtu.be

Awesome tour, we're so glad we did that.

On Sunday we took a roundabout route in the direction of home, starting through Conway (cute little town but full of people heading south) and over the Kancamagus Highway (much less traveled).  A covered bridge caught our attention:

Yoga on the bridge:

John's version of a bridge pose:

One of the scenic stops along the way up the Swift River:

From Lincoln we worked our way up Franconia Notch and the multiple destinations.  My favorite was a short hike to see the Flume Gorge:

Lovely sets of stairs giving access up the gorge:

The beautiful waterfall at the top:

Another covered bridge, this one for the walking path (with a large tree as the bottom support, moved here after it fell many years ago):

Some trees just don't have it easy:

The Basin, another fun stop and short hike:

Lovely little creek through here:

The Old Man of the Mountain historic site, for viewing the spot where he used to be before falling off the side of the mountain, sadly:

A "profiler" for people to see what it used to look like:

More profiles:

Time to head home... we thoroughly enjoyed our tour of northern New Hampshire, that was great fun!