Home at last...

Vacation was wonderful! Thank you to everyone who left me a comment saying "have fun" or sent an email wishing the same! Oh, and b/c I am a native New Englander and never thought to mention this:
The White Mountains are in New Hampshire, about a 2 hour drive from where I am now. It's a goregous place with many mountains and valleys and hidden ponds and waterfalls. It's huge. It's also part of the Appalachian Trail.

Now, I need to preface this soon-to-be-long post: we forgot the camera. Yup. No pictures. BUT, I have searched the internet high and low, and I think you are going to be happy! ;)

First, here is where we stayed:














Conway Lake in Conway NH... we camped in our ole' faithful, the tent. It was a goregous site--- right on the water. We had a great view of the fireworks that the people on the other side of the cove (non-camping) were setting off nightly. Yup. NIGHTLY. Warming my toes by a fire, eating a marshmallow and watching fireworks.

Now, some of you fellow New Englanders are saying "did you go to North Conway?" (you non-NE's--- North Conway was outlet shopping Mecca for decades... today, notsomuch) And yes, we did! We shopped at Zep's and hit the 5 and Dime. We did go to Stonewall Kitchen and to
Harry and David. These two items made it into my bag. :)














We went swimming here:














Echo Lake State Park

Now, we were on a lake, right? But, the swimming area at Conway Lake was very small, and packed with children and boulders. Yup, boulders. There were these large boulders that the kids kept jumping off and tons of turtles. And besides, I like Echo Lake better. It's sandy bottomed, ultra clean, fairly shallow and never crowded.














Why does the Lake echo? Well, b/c of this large ledge: Cathedral Ledge. It's a tough climb, but you can drive a mountain road up most of it. It's fun spotting little specks of red and orange and yellow up there--- the climbers!


So, besides eating hot dogs for way too many dinners and counting marshmallows as a food group, what did we do? Something PC REALLY wanted to do. He was like a little kid the night before " let's hurry up and go to sleep b/c then when we wake up it'll be tomorrow and we can ride the train!".... it was great!
We rode all the way up to the Notch. 5 hours roundtrip--- and I want to do it again on my birthday. :) We saw all kinds of ponds, waterfalls, mountains, hikers (yup), historical sites, valleys and some turtles. PC was looking for moose, but alas, no moose.












This is the Crawford Notch station...there is only one more station up the tracks (~30 minutes north).

If you have hiked the Appalachian Trail all the way through, you have seen this: the Highland Center. It was beautiful. I would stay there any day! It was right next to the train station and across from Saco Lake. It was breathtaking!

This is from one of my favorite sites for photos... I love these pictures! This is the "notch". beautiful, no? So, that was vacation! A lot of stuff, but a lot of sitting too. I started a scarf on the way up the Notch train. I finished the baby sweater (photo tomorrow)... I am almost done with PC's sweater (from LAST YEAR)-- i want it Done.Done.Done. Last night we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean II . It was good... not as good as #1 but I am oh so happy to see there will be a number 3! _mini