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So now that you've all seen my battered face, I'm going to return to pictures a bit nicer to look at with the continuation of our vacation recap.

From Vermont, we scooted on into New Hampshire, which I expected to be quite similar to Vermont. After all, they're both tiny little states located in the same area. I was, however, disappointed in New Hampshire. It simply wasn't as scenic as Vermont and also had a kitschy air to it. What's up with the mini golf courses and strip malls that looked like they belong at the beach? And how in the heck does New Hampshire get away with charging $10 to take a hike (which is what was being charged to walk along the boardwalk to some water feature in the park where the Old Man in the Mountain resided before his face crumbled right off the cliff)? Isn't that such a Republican thing to do? (In case you didn't know, NH is pretty much the only red state in New England.)

But not to be completely unfair, New Hampshire did have a few cool things. For one, it's the only state where we saw a moose.

Unfortunately, it wasn't real.

Also cool were the many waterfalls along the side of the Kancamagus Highway. We stopped at three locations to enjoy them. Our first stop was Sabbaday Falls, which has two large waterfalls and one small one all in a series.




Our next stop was at Rocky Gorge, where a copy of a very, very old Reader's Digest article about a girl trapped under the falls was posted as a warning to take the "No Swimming" signs seriously. However, as you can see in the photo, the tale didn't hold much sway with the minions. It probably didn't help that the girl survived and ended up just fine. I mean, if you're trying to scare people, telling them that in the end everything turns out okay isn't really the way to do it.


Our final water feature stop was at Lower Falls, where there's not really much of a falls, but there is a cool natural waterslide similar to one we visited in Arizona last year with our friends Megan and Bryan. I was all game to try it until I stuck my toe in and it promptly fell off from frost bite. So okay, I didn't lose a toe, but I might have had I kept it in any longer. This was glacial water, and I'm pretty sure there were chunks of ice floating in it. Jeff has thicker skin than I do, so he braved it and had a good time chuting the slide.


And the final thing that was noteworthy about New Hampshire was this covered bridge. We obviously didn't seek them out, but it's the only one we saw in all of New England. I thought they'd be more prominently featured.

Before crossing into Maine, we made one last stop at Mount Washington, which is the tallest mountain in the eastern United States. I'm not, however, going to post a picture, as it's really not much more than a glorified hill...at least that's how it appears in pictures. None of the purple mountains majesty you've got going on out west. Although I would be remiss not to note that Mount Washington's summit has some of the craziest weather in the world. I can't report on that first hand, however, as we didn't want to pay simply to drive to the summit (like you could just drive up a real mountain anyhow...think I'll go drive McKinley...see you in an hour) and we didn't have the time to make the hike. Maybe another time? Or maybe not...NH isn't really on my must-return-to list.