New Hampshire - Day 12 - Connecticut River valley

Littleton/Franconia Notch KOA
Thursday, 12 July 2018

today's route

Soon into our drive today we passed an attraction called Polar Caves caves.  It looks interesting, though I don't think I'd have paid the $20 entrance fee.  But for a cave crawler or a rock climber or someone with kids, I'm sure it's worth it.

Signs at several points along the way told me I was on The Moosilauke Highway.  As usual, though, it wasn't a real highway but instead a narrow 2-lane road.  It wound around through a lot of trees, which the map says is because I was on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest.  Very pretty.  And fortunately not a lot of traffic because there weren't any pull-out areas worth mentioning.  That road took me all the way to the Connecticut River and the border with Vermont.

Near Gilmans Corner I crossed the Appalachian Trail - nothing paved and fancy like I saw in Pennsylvania (was it?) and I only knew that's what it was because a sign told me so.

At the junction with Route 10 at the river, I saw 2 hitchhikers, separate, at different places at the intersection.  I mention them because they're the first hitchhikers I've seen in NH and are some of the only ones I've seen on this whole trip.

All along the drive today I saw quite a few bicyclists, the majority of them definitely senior citizens.  With the narrow road and no shoulders at all in most places, I'd have thought they'd rethink their route.

Once I started driving along the Conn. River valley, I started seeing lots of corn fields.  The farms don't seem particularly large - it's not industrial scale - but there's a lot of corn growing in New Hampshire.  I also saw a few small fields of maybe squash and maybe some kind of herbs.

The road is called the Connecticut River Byway - some sort of US highway designation.  Very attractive in a bucolic sort of way.

In this photo, the river is down out of sight, and the hills are in Vermont.  I only saw the river once as I was going around a corner, but there was no place to pull off so couldn't take a photo.

Farther north at Woodsville the road swung inland and ran along the Ammonoosuc River.  I'm guessing these roads are ancient in origin because of paralleling the rivers so closely.  That must be where the Native Americans, and later the Europeans, traveled.

Not much farther up the road I came to Bath, best known for its store and its bridge.

The Brick Store

The Brick Store is the oldest continuously operating general store in the US.  Its founding date seems fluid but was maybe 1824.  I went in, of course, and it is a general store.  Lots of tourist stuff but also some clothing that would likely only appeal to locals and a variety of foods of the convenience store range.  They also advertise their smoked meats (which I didn't try) and their doughnuts (which I did - very good).

Just behind the store is the Bath-Haverill Bridge, built in 1829 with funds contributed by both towns, to cross the Ammonoosuc River.  It's the longest covered bridge in New Hampshire.

If you blow this one up you might be able to see the little bitty waterfall on the left.

Just a few miles farther down the road is Lisbon, which has an interesting history. Lisbon

When I stopped to take a few pictures, I met a man who told me he'd lived there his whole 62 years and loved it.  He said all 4 of his kids had told him they were leaving and never coming back, and so far 3 of them were back again to raise their families.  Nice man.

There's a concert at the church tonight - every other Thursday during the summers.

The man said his dad was one of those listed on the WWII memorial - he'd been at the Battle of the Bulge.