19.7.2012 – 19.7.2012  28 °C

We got going at the usual time this morning after having a very tasty homecooked brekky. Our drive today took us out of Maine and up to Lincoln, New Hampshire. The first part of our day was a really pleasant drive along the coast of Maine to Belfast. The drive was punctuated by cutesy towns and glimpses of the ocean. Each town seemed to have its own antique shop (or two or three), you would think with the amount of competition they couldn’t all keep their shops open? Apparently there is a big market in antiques here in the States!!

We left the coast at Belfast and started to head inland. The next couple of hours saw us drive thru more little towns and a few farmsteads. One thing that is notable about this area is that there aren’t the number of farms as there are in the Mid West… Here it is more houses and forests! It’s as if the farms used to be here, but due to no one working them they have slowly turned back into forested areas! I’m not sure why the farms aren’t here anymore but I know it isn’t for lack of water!

Lunch today was in the town of Rumford at the track facilities. It felt slightly strange to be eating our lunch (crispbread with cheese) whilst people walked around the track “doing their laps”. To be fair though, we had driven thru three towns prior looking for any picnic table and so the first one we found we used! As always, as soon as we left town we found this big park (with picnic tables) overlooking a waterfall!

We finally arrived into New Hampshire not too long after lunch. NH is famous for its number plate motto “Live Free or Die” and seemingly this is the view point of this heavily Republican state… We think (although we’re not certain) that you don’t have to wear seat belts in this state, if you are happy to die in an accident than that is ok! Our first stop in this very tree covered state was into the info centre at Gorham. We grabbed a map of the White Mountains state forest and the surrounding areas and started driving. Our plan (prior to entering the state forest) was to go for a drive up Mt Washington (one of the highest mountains on the E Coast) this was until we discovered that it was going to cost us over 40 dollars in tolls to get to the top!! Needless to say we decided we weren’t that desperate to see the view and decided to do a couple of bushwalks instead. The first walk we did was down to see the Glen Ellis falls. The falls themselves were fairly stock standard but with a fairly easy trail, it was nice to be able to stretch out the legs and get some fresh air.

Our map showed a couple of covered bridges on our route so we took some slight detours so that we could see the world famous New Hampshire covered bridges. Like the ones in Ontario, they are wooden covered bridges (no more to say really!)… Actually, after we had seen two this arvo we decided to forgo the pleasure of finding the others.. once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all!

The ranger at the info station we stopped at earlier had suggested a couple of places where we potentially might see some Moose, so we actually decided to push on this evening and head over the Kancamagus Hwy from Conway to Lincoln. We had already planned to drive this road (thanks to our trusty LP) but after getting the oil from the ranger we decided to do the drive at dusk and hope that we would see some more Moose.

Our first stop was to this gorge that also had a corresponding pond. Our hope was that we might see some Moose eating grass and stuff on the shore of the lake (Moose live in marshy, swampy areas). We walked out to the pond and immediately knew that we wouldn’t see any Moose in this pond as it is a clear lake (no marshy edges). We also thought we wouldn’t see any beavers because we couldn’t see any lodges or lily pads. Anyway, so whilst I snapped a couple of shots and turned to walk away, D saw a beaver swimming in the pond. The beaver was less than 50 meters away! I couldn’t believe it!! It’s the first time I’ve seen a beaver up close and this guy was pretty cute. He was so close that we could hear him chomping on a branch!!!! He swum around a bit, chomped some branches before we decided to leave him in peace to eat his dinner! What luck??? I was dead certain (as soon as I saw the lake) that we wouldn’t see anything, except a pretty view, and then a beaver is just there in front of us!! Just goes to show that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover!

We continued down the Kancamagus and stopped at another likely Moose spot… No Moose…. Our guidebook suggested that the best place to see them was the Lily pond, so we started hunting for this elusive pond. We found a ranger map that showed the pond as three parking spots up the road. So we continued our drive, passing a likely looking pond. We knew that this couldn’t be the Lily pond because we hadn’t done three parking lots. We finally got to the third lot and discovered that it was up on the pass… no ponds in site (and not likely to be because we were way up the mountain..) D found someone who told us that we needed to drive back to the pond that we saw as this was the Lily Pond…. Apparently the small gravel turnout area near the pond is the parking area???? Regardless, we eagerly returned to the pond to find an elusive Moose……. We saw plenty of insects (well felt them eating us), we saw a couple of crows, plenty of muddy Moose tracks but no Bullwinkles!!! DAMN! (No beavers either for that matter)..

By this stage it was getting really late so we called off the Moose hunting off and drove into Lincoln to find some accom. We checked into a dodgy (but cheap) roadside motel and ducked downtown for some tasty Chinese before we braved our crap beds for a poor night’s sleep! Tomorrow we are continuing thru the New England hills this time across into Vermont to check out the Green Mountains!

Song of the Day– John Denver, Annie’s song