Franconia Notch State Park

 We woke up to cloudy skies - I figured we would hit some rain during our journey so no surprise on the cloudy weather!  Drove into town for breakfast sandwiches and for some reason I DID NOT get coffee and later determined I should have - ha!  

We headed into Franconia Notch State Park which was just a few miles away so that was nice!!  Timed entries are needed to get into Flume Gorge and even though we were early, they let us go on in!

Flume Gorge is a 2 mile hike - beautiful - and then you start climbing on this wooden walkway and steps for quite a ways - I can see why they have timed entries because it can sure get crowded on this narrow walkway with everyone trying to take pictures!

Blogger is not being kind this morning as it posted all my pictures in the reverse order - oh well!

This is a neat covered bridge that we discovered in our travels on one of the roads we drove on!  I LOVE the picnic table in the middle.

Another beautiful scene taken off a bridge!

Another covered bridge as we wound our way down from Flume Gorge.

So since the pictures are all reversed, this is the top of Flume Gorge, after we hiked in!  Flume Gorge is a natural gorge than is 800 ft. horizonally length.  The granite sides reaching to the top are about 70 to 90 feet high!  It was a really wonderful walk to it!

Here you can see the walkways leading to the gorge!

It was a serene and calm walk along these boardwalks!

Beautiful trees with some reds - oh how I love the reds!

Another of the covered bridges inside the park!

Hiking above the bridge always makes for a nice picture!

I had hoped to hike up to Artist's Bluff which was a little shorter hike, and the views are supposed to be fantastic!  But the clouds had really settled in after we were done seeing Flume Gorge and we decided it just wasn't worth it to hike more and not see the views!

We had went to the store the day before and bought some lunch items so just ate in the car as we drove!  We ended up driving the Sawyer Hwy which took us from Warren to Woodstock and it was a very pretty drive - note, this is NOT the Woodstock where the music festival was held - that was in Woodstock, VT.

By this time it was raining so we headed back to the cabin for some rest time, before we went out to dinner that night at the White Tavern - I must have been tired that evening as my notes for the day weren't very complete so I have no idea what we even ordered - ha!

The rain lulled us to sleep that night - or maybe it was the stream out back!