This year the 4th of July fell on a Tuesday, so we decided to take some extra days off and make it a long weekend.
Michele and Eli went up on Wednesday night. They had a night stay at the Lake of the Clouds hut on Mt Washington planned for Thursday night. Dave, Aaron, and Tommy came up on Thursday night. We all stayed until late Tuesday.
On Thursday, Michele and Eli made it to the hut, in the rain, and then summited Mt. Monroe. On Friday they summited Mt. Washington, but conditions were so bad (70 mph gusts) they took the Cog down. Overall, Eli was super excited about his successful first summit of Mt. Washington. I’m sure there are many more to come in the future!
For Dave, on Friday morning he took the kids to the Franconia playground. Afterwards they went hiking in the Basin.
Afterwards, we all met up back at the Lodge. We had some deliveries, new mattresses and a refrigerator (ours was broken by the time we moved in, doh!) The big hit of the weekend was our internet guy, who got so frustrated by not being able to find the house he just gave up and headed home. The whole family found this very odd, yet amusing.
On Saturday morning, we headed out to Echo Lake, which is at the base of Cannon Mountain.
The clouds were rolling in so we headed back to the Lodge for lunch and nap. It turned into a giant storm with torrential downpours. We got a lot of rain that leaked into the house and a good portion of our road was even washed away!
On Sunday, we decided to hike Artists Bluff. The weather was great, but the conditions were very wet. Tommy had a hard time hiking in his worn out sneakers on the wet rocks and roots, but we all survived.
In the afternoon, we went to Clark’s Trading Post, in Lincoln. It turned out the park was about to close, but it was good to explore the area.
On Monday Dave had to stay home in the morning to meet the house inspector for our insurance. It turns out that in New Hampshire all new insurance policies get an inspection, makes sense to me!
Michele took the boys to the Flume Gorge.
On Monday night we went out to dinner at Schilling Beer Company in Littleton, NH. The food and beer here is awesome! Also, the setting is right on the Ammonoosuc River. Before dinner we grabbed some Chutters for dessert during the Fireworks.
The fireworks were a total townie event! It was on a field and they had some games for the kids and a snack bar. The kids just love being able to release some energy and staying up late.
On Tuesday, we decided to go to Story Land for the day! We got to the park right at 9:30am for the opening and stayed until 4pm. After the park we had some ice cream in North Conway.
The biggest hits were the Roar-a-saurus for Eli, the Flume for Aaron, and the train ride for tommy.
