Thursday 15^th June

It was a clear morning for our drive across to Jackson, New Hampshire. The purpose for stopping in Jackson was really just to break up the long drive from Burlington, Vermont, to Bar Harbor, Maine but I turned it into a two-night stop so as to take in a tour of the popular White Mountains.

We took the scenic route from Burlington that went via the Kancamagus Hwy as suggested by many of the articles I’d read during my research, with one example linked here. I found there was an Action Tour Guide self-guided driving tour available for this particular section of highway 112 so we used that as well. The tour narration started in Lincoln and went through to Conway, a distance of just over 55 Km. It was a quite useful guide for the journey although we did miss the one main stop along the route that I had wanted to see; the Albany covered bridge. There are hundreds of covered bridges throughout the USA and their purpose was to keep snow of the timber bridges to prevent them from rotting.

The other, and I think more noteworthy, aspect of the day was the huge number of bikies on the road, male and female, old and young, there were literally hundreds of them. They were mostly travelling in the opposite direction to us but we came across huge groups of them at every stop we made and in all the small towns we passed through and the thundering roar of Harley-type bikes became the dominant soundtrack for the day. We had apparently arrived in the middle of a week-long biker festival, the largest in the USA, and it was their centenary celebration with a town in New Hampshire being the locus for this huge gathering. The image and sound of hundreds of bikes will be the dominant memory I take home after this particular day.

We eventually arrived at our accommodation in Jackson at around 3 pm. The Inn at Thorn Hill was a lovely period property and we had a huge room on the third floor, The Presidential Suite, with views out to the Presidential Mountain Range (hence the name) and Mt Washington. Jackson, NH only has a population of just over 1,ooo, so I wasn’t expecting to find a Lululemon, but the proximity to White Mountains makes it a popular year-round outdoor destination area for hiking, skiing, swimming and boating. We only have two nights here and have a scenic mountain tour booked for tomorrow morning

After dropping our bags at the Inn we walked 5 minutes down the hill to check out the Jackson Village shops but it was rather small and so only took a few minutes. It’s basically just one cafe, a florist, a puzzle shop (weird!) and a couple of restaurants although there were a few more Inns and a rather nice golf course. I was pleased to find that there was a covered bridge in the Village though, The Honeymoon Bridge, and this went some way to making up for the one we missed earlier in the day and, apparently, this is one of the most photographed covered bridges in New Hampshire.

We wandered back up to the Inn after our walk and decided to have dinner at the in-house restaurant rather than down in the Village. Forty at Thorn Hill has quite a good reputation and we would definitely agree as the ambience, view and food were all great. We chose to have our meal out on the huge wrap-around deck with views out to the White Mountains. It was very nice to be out of a big city for a change and a lovely end to our rather unusual day.

 

Friday 16^th June

It was a cool morning and Mark started his day with a bike ride whilst I did some yoga. Our host, on check-in, had reminded us not to leave food in the car as it attracts the bears! So that put an end to any morning walk ideas I might have had. I wasn’t sure why Mark had got out and returned so early but then I found him camped in front of his lap-top watching watching the Swans game. Enough said!

Our main activity for the day was a driving tour up to the summit of Mt Washington. Apparently the scenery is spectacular but the road is rather scary so there are tours you can take where an experienced driver is at the helm and that is what we opted for. Our two hour tour was with Mt Washington Auto Road from 11.15 am – 1.15 pm.

Once we were back out on the road, heading to pick up our tour, we were back in with all the bikies. There were plenty on the local roads and highway and hordes of them up at the starting area of our Mt Washington tour; the scenic and winding route being an obvious drawcard for them. It was an eerie feeling waiting for the start of our tour with the many menacing bikes throttling loudly in the background.

The 2 hr tour was made up of a 30 minute drive up, and the same back down, with one hour spent at the summit. The ascent up Mt Washington was interesting due to the narrow, winding road and the change in vegetation from forest to Alpine Tundra to Alpine as we eventually peaked above the tree line near the summit. The summit has a small museum, lookout area and shop and usually not much else but today there were heaps of bikies. They were an especially strong presence on the drive up as groups occasionally roared past when overtaking our van. This was an experience that will forever hold memories for me of the bikies as much as the mountain! Oh, and we also saw a group of South Asians at the Summit, the first in ages and Mark helped them out by taking a group photo.

Our driver, Pete, explained a few facts on the drive up about Mt Washington, the road we were traveling on and White Mountains:

• White Mountain so named due to quartz that is found on the mountain.
• The Road : was built in 1861 and took 10 years to build. It is privately owned and maintained.
• The road build was during Civil war.
• The didn’t have dynamite so they used Black powder.
• It was initially used by horse and wagon traffic before automobiles.
• The Mount Washington cog railway is the worlds first mountain climbing cog railway and it opened in 1869.

Our tour finished up at 1.15 pm and we decided to head back to Conway for some lunch. Rain had been forecast for late in the afternoon but we got some drops just as we were back in the car. We were lucky to have got our Mt Washington tour in during fine weather as it had been wet for numerous days prior to our visit and more bad weather was expected over the coming days.

The rain had also put an end to any thoughts of going on a short hike and so we decided to drive back out to find the Albany Covered Bridge, the one we missed yesterday, and we were pleased to see that we were the only people in the car park making for much better and easier photography. We headed back to our Inn after that and had a bit of down time before another evening of dining at Forty at Thorn Hill.