Robin and I have been married for three years now, those years seem to have come and gone very quickly. I had planned a long 4 day camping trip for us in the States of New Hampshire and Vermont; however, due to the cold weather forecast, I cut the trip down to two days and rented a hotel room for one night.
On Thursday the 6th we headed to New Hampshire at 5AM and made our way to Kancamagus Highway. I wanted to re-visit a few areas we spent time in on our honeymoon. We noticed that while we made our way to Kancamagus Highway that several areas of Maine and New Hampshire we behind on the color change. Kancamagus was at least 1 week behind compared to our trip 3 years ago- everything was vibrant at that time.
We first stopped along the highway to take photos of the fast running water flowing over a group of rounded white rocks with a vibrant red maple tree in the background. Our next stop was at Rocky Gorge, a very scenic area that was affected by Hurricane Irene last month- the sidewalk in several areas was in need of repair. This location housed our first New Hampshire geocache. We walked around Falls Pond to find the cache. For the most part we were able to job due to the trail consisting of soft soil, fallen pine needles with only visible ground roots in the small inclines of the trail. Running allowed us to stay fairly warm since the temperature was fairly cool.
Second half of the entry:
The next stop was Sabbaday Falls, one of our favorite areas along the highway. We walked along the trail the runs parallel with the stream that flows from the Sabbaday falls until we came to the lower end of the falls where the last step empties into an emerald green pool. Depending on the time of day, one ray of light will shine down at an angle illuminating the mist from the waterfall as well as lighting up the emerald green pool below. This time around the lighting and weather were not very favorable, but we did enjoy the scene none the less. We found 3 other geocaches in the area and made our way to Stowe, Vermont where we stayed in a hotel that was older, but decent on the inside. It had a common area with books, games, and a wood fireplace where we found two chairs placed in front of the fire and a cat that resembled Marbles (our cat). He is the friendly hotel cat that lives there year round. We ordered Subway and spent the rest of our evening in the hotel room.
The next day we woke up to a nice covering of frost on our Honda; we decided to stay in due to the large amount of fog covering the town- we had wanted to see the Stowe Church with the morning light. We ate in the breakfast room where the hotel provided a generous meal of cheese, bagels, toast, yogurt, fruit, cereal, muffins, juice & milk.
After eating, we loaded the car and made our way to Moss Glen Falls in Stowe which was only 5 miles from our hotel. The parking lot was very small and we would not have found the area if we didn’t have a GPS as the falls are not marked from what we could see. We made our way through an area that runs along the outflow of the waterfall; this area is evidently home to a beaver as several large birch trees either were or were in the process of being felled. As we continued on our .5 mile hike we found that the lack of sun really affected the temperature; we were not prepared and our hands slightly suffered. As we got closer to the viewpoint of the falls we started to hear the load roar of the water falling at least 100’. The lighting at the time was dim so we decided to look for a nearby geocache and came back 40 minutes later where the lighting was better. I found a plateau to the right of the view point that drops down 10’. This plateau provided a unique view point of the waterfall; one of the legs on my tripod was secured to the edge of the ledge that hung slightly over the level plateau while the others were on the level surface- this setup was needed to capture the photo that I had in mind. During this process Robin took a picture of me which I thought came out nice.
After finishing up on the plateau I set the tripod up at the overlook and took several shots, most of which were fine lighting wise, but the color for me was off a bit. After spending an hour or so at the waterfall we headed back to the car and made our way to Granville, where another popular waterfall is- oddly, the waterfall has the same name as the previous, Moss Glen falls.
Along the way we found a Cabot Cheese outlet store/guest center; Robin wanted to stop in and see what they had for sale. On the inside they had freezers with many different types of flavored cheese that you can't find in other states- or at least very easily. They also had a large room set up with food samples of all their flavors and other food products, along with a TV playing a movie on how the cheese is created. We ended up spending $25 or so on different cheese products.
The set-up for this waterfall was better due to the lighting and the colorful emerald pool the water emptied into. The location is wheel-chair friendly with a nice lookout point. After taking several photos we started to look around for geocache that someone had moved from the original co-ordinates due to the recent Hurricane Irene.
On our way back to Maine, we took the scenic route home. At one point in Vermont (the location un-known at the time but later discovered that it was Cabot, VT) we stopped at a very scenic location. We were atop a hill that overlooked a small valley. The downward swoop of the valley closet to the road was a pasture with many Holstein cows grazing in the afternoon light. In the pit of the valley ran a line of trees and the farm that housed the cows, their food and whatever equipment needed for extracting the milk for the cheese. On the opposite side of the valley's hill were alternating rows of corn, and field- something I had not seen in Maine.
