GRISWOLDDAD
Parenting, Entertainment, and Travel Tips
Things to Do in New Hampshire
*For a list of New Hampshire's top yearly events, click here.
New Hampshire is known for its autumn leaves, skiing, antiquing, and covered bridges. It makes for a peaceful and very pretty getaway.
The leaves are best seen from the most scenic drive in New Hampshire (for leaves), the Kancamagus Highway.
Skiing can be done from any number of locations at Mount Washington, Loon Mountain, Cannon Mountain, Cranmore Mountain, Mount Sunapee, Gunstock Mountain, and Wildcat Mountain. All of these mountains are great for skiing in the winter (and filled with resorts) and hiking in the other seasons.
Covered bridges litter New Hampshire and much of the New England area. For a comprehensive list of New Hampshire's bridges, click here. We visited the Blow-Me-Down bridge and the Cornish-Windsor bridge in Cornish. The Cornish-Windsor crosses the border from Cornish to Windsor, Vermont.
Blow-Me-Down Bridge Cornish-Windsor Bridge
Another beautiful aspect of New Hampshire is the Lakes Region. This includes Lakes Winnipesaukee, Squam, Winnisquam, Sunapee, Ossipee, and Newfound. On our trip, we stayed in Georges Mills beside Lake Sunapee. The lakes offer canoeing, kayaking, paddle boating, and all other forms of boating, swimming, hiking, biking, and all around scenic viewing.
Hampton Beach
While New Hampshire is known mostly for its fall and winter activities, it does have a beach that proves New Hampshire's fun in the summer too, Hampton Beach.
Laconia
If you want to visit the World's Biggest Arcade, come to Laconia, NH for Funspot!
Moultonborough
Come here to see the Castle in the Clouds. This 5,500 acre, 16 room mountainside mansion overlooks Lake Winnipesaukee and the Ossipee Mountains. The house, carriage house, gift shop, art gallery, and café are open to the public.
Mount Washington
Mount Washington is the highest peak in northeastern United States. For the 8 most spectacular miles of New Hampshire, go to Mount Washington Auto Road. This road takes you across ridgeline after ridgeline to the peak of Mount Washington. From the summit, on a clear day, you can see Vermont, New York, Maine, Quebec, and even the Atlantic ocean.
I'll be honest...I didn't make it to the summit. We were on a little bit of a timetable, and couldn't find a good path up the mountain. This was just before every phone had GPS. We almost circled Mount Washington...which I began feeling was "good enough" and time got tight, so we kept on trucking. I then started seeing cars with bumper stickers that said, "I beat Mount Washington," but I felt Mount Washington had beaten me...
