Nov. 3rd (afternoon) - Franconia Notch and more Waterfalls.

Since we last posted we have increased our Waterfall count from 17 to 25 in an easy 3 mile hike. Nothing better than bang for your buck if your talking about waterfalls. We left N. Woodstock, buzzing on caffeine and headed up to Lincoln, New Hampshire and the Franconia Notch State Park where pretty much everything was shut down for the season but that has been the way this trip has been going. But we realized since all the waterparks and a lot of eateries are shut down we are saving a ton of money because we love waterparks and eating. Also if stuff is shut down we have decided we don't have to pay park fees as often so we toured the whole Flume gorge for free and boy was it beautiful.

 The Flume and Liberty Gorge are located in Franconia Notch State Park in New Hampshire and a nice 3-4 mile hike gets you plenty of waterfall action. We were able to see a hundred and some odd year old covered bridge - Jena noticed that even though the park was closed they still put Holiday Wreaths up on the bridges... strange?

A little bit of a hike later and we were at a place called The Pool, a 40 foot deep spot on the Lost River where without regulations there could be some amazing cliff-diving. Also they used a fallen 96 foot pine called the Sentinel Pine to create a bridge across the gorge which was pretty cool to see.

 

 

Continuing from there we ventured to Liberty Falls which was unlike any of the other falls we had seen on this trip. Instead of a distinct drop Liberty Falls was a steep, bare strip of rock where the water cascaded over it twisting and turning its way down the gorge.

The last part of the hike was what is called Avalanche Falls and it is located at the top of the Flume Gorge and during the on-season there are boardwalks which allow you to walk up the whole gorge but during the off-season they take out parts of them so you can't enjoy it the same way as if you had paid. But jokes on them cause we are nimble human beings and we made use of our evolutionary gifts and traversed into the gorge and saw the falls and all its glory close-up.

After the hike we continued on towards Maine. We stopped for dinner in Naples, ME at a place called Bray's Brewery where we had some good beers (a cream ale, a sweet potato ale, and an IPA brewed on-site) and some amazing food; clam chowder, jalapeno cornbread, and the most amazing Saffron/chives mussel cream stew. From there we continued on down to a place to tuck ourselves in for the night.