{"id":514,"date":"2015-05-23T23:20:51","date_gmt":"2015-05-24T06:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bryonross.com\/blog\/?p=514"},"modified":"2015-05-23T23:20:51","modified_gmt":"2015-05-24T06:20:51","slug":"connecticut-river-byway-saturday-may-9-sunday-may-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bryonross.com\/blog\/?p=514","title":{"rendered":"Connecticut River Byway (Saturday, May 9 – Sunday, May 10)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although we were planning to spend about 2-3 days in the White Mountains, we pretty much finished what Valerie planned to do on Friday. So, Valerie quickly put together a new plan on Friday night. We’re going to slowly drive down the Connecticut River Byway<\/a>\u00a0along the New Hampshire\/Vermont border.<\/p>\n

Before visiting any touristic sights, we stopped at\u00a0Wayne’s Mart (attached to a gas station) where Valerie ran in and bought several sandwiches for our breakfast, lunch, and dinner. (Valerie ordered so much food that the\u00a0cook said\u00a0that Valerie must be\u00a0very hungry.)<\/p>\n

Our first touristic stop of the day was the\u00a0Franconia Notch Flume Gorge<\/a>\u00a0state park, which usually includes a boardwalk over the gorge. Sadly, the boardwalk was closed due to latent snow, but we were still able to hike along much of the 2 mile loop trail. After our hike, we drove a bit further to The\u00a0Basin for a picnic lunch along the river\/creek.<\/p>\n

The ranger at the flume gorge recommended the Lost River Gorge (which just opened that day) since the boardwalk at the state park was closed. Similar to the park, it advertises a boardwalk over a river gorge.\u00a0While the boardwalk was very nice (somewhat reminiscent of gorge boardwalks in Switzerland), sadly\u00a0most of the caves at the Lost River Gorge were still closed due to the high water level.<\/p>\n

As we continued our drive southbound along the edge\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0Connecticut River, we just happened to run into\u00a0Dartmouth College<\/a>\u00a0in Hanover, NH. We walked around the campus for a while and then ate the remainder of our sandwiches at one of the park benches on campus.<\/p>\n

We spent the night\u00a0at the Holiday Inn Express in White River Junction, VT (just across the river from Hanover). The hotel seems to be full of people visiting Dartmouth.<\/p>\n

The next morning, we stopped at the King Arthur Flour bakery store\u00a0in Norwich, VT, where we picked up sandwiches for lunch and other treats. Apparently, the bakers at this store start work at 3:30am. (I’m glad I’m not a baker.)<\/p>\n

On the recommendation of our friend Lily, we decided to take an “easy” hike to the Gile Mountain<\/a> tower. While the hike was not as easy as I might have hoped, the\u00a0top of the fire tower offered great views of Vermont landscape.<\/p>\n

As we continued our drive, we stopped at Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site<\/a>. Unfortunately, most of the facilities were closed for the weekend, but we were able to eat our sandwiches outside\u00a0in the gardens. Interestingly, this site has the statue of Robert Gould Shaw<\/a> that is the counterpart to the plaster cast\u00a0we saw at the National Gallery of Art in DC.<\/p>\n

Valerie’s book indicated that the flagship store of LA Burdick<\/a>\u00a0chocolatier is in the tiny town of Walpole, NH. We made a quick detour for some drinking chocolate and mid-day snacks. Nearby, there was\u00a0an orchard that usually sells cider, but sadly, there was no cider as there were no apples (too early in the season?).<\/p>\n

We made a couple more stops along the drive. Valerie couldn’t resist stopping at Northfield Creamie for soft serve after we saw a giant line in front of the building.\u00a0We also stopped at a super-hipster\u00a0book store in Montague, MA, that\u00a0happened to be next to a particularly pretty creek.<\/p>\n

We are spending the night in Holiday Inn Express in Hadley, MA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although we were planning to spend about 2-3 days in the White Mountains, we pretty much finished what Valerie planned to do on Friday. So, Valerie quickly put together a new plan on Friday night. We’re going to slowly drive down the Connecticut River Byway\u00a0along the New Hampshire\/Vermont border. Before visiting any touristic sights, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bryonross.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bryonross.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bryonross.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bryonross.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bryonross.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.bryonross.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":515,"href":"http:\/\/www.bryonross.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions\/515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bryonross.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bryonross.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bryonross.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}