The second half of our vacation (days 5 through 9) in New England consisted of a lot more activities, including a relaxing evening watching an outdoor play under the stars, an amazing whale-watching excursion, and actually ending up in jail the last day of our trip! Avery also got to visit the state of Maine for the first time.
Thursday morning (day five) we took the short hike up Rock Rimmon in Manchester. It is a rock overlooking the city. The face of it is popular with rock climbers, but since Avery was on our hiking backpack we hiked up the backside.
On the way down Avery fell asleep in the backpack!
Then we drove into downtown Manchester and walked around the old mills. We took a quick step into the Merrimack River. The water is very clear through this part. The contrast of blue sky, red brick, green vegetation, and blue water was neat.
And Colleen was her normal self, heaving plastic bottles out of the river!
Then we walked around the mills that have been converted into tech businesses and restaurants. Texas Instruments, Autodesk, UNH technology graduate school, plus others have offices there.
Then we left Avery with grandma to babysit while we headed out to Portsmouth. We took a run along the beach past the mansions in Rye, and then swam in the water to cool off. The ocean sure is "wicked cold" even in July, it helped us cool off though!
We drove into downtown Portsmouth and had dinner at Poco's Bow Street Cantina on the deck overlooking the Piscatagua River. After Margaritas, fish and shrimp tacos, and dessert, Colleen took home a nice souvenir glass.
We then over to Prescott Park and watch the play of Wizard of Oz. It was a beautiful night to sit under the stars and watch the play on the waterfront! Here is the area about an hour before it started, while they were setting up
Friday (day six) we left Avery with grandma again to babysit, and headed up to North Conway. On the way up we stopped to see Colleen's favorite lake, Lake Chocorua
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocorua_lake
(fun fact, Jim wrote that Wikipedia page, and that photo on the wikipedia webpage is his too!)
Up in North Conway we went to Attitash Mountain, a ski resort that has a lot of great summer activities too. The longest alpine slide in North America is there
A lot of people had bumps and scrapes from flying off the thing. Luckily we both stayed on on both of our trips down!
Plus there is a new ride called the Mountain Coaster, where you control the speed of the roller coaster on the way down (you ride in solo coaster cars) down the mountain side. We also did a water slide, and an aquaboggin (a water tube ride), and the Eurobungy (Colleen did four back flips, Jim did...none). There was a lot to do with an all access day pass there in the summer. Definitely check it out if you are in the White Mountains region during the summer!
On the way back to Manchester we stopped in the town of Sandwich, NH to check out the river and potholes. Jim jumped off the rocks a couple times into the water. The river is so clear there!
Saturday (day seven) we headed down to Boston to see our friend Christine. (Christine was the maid of honor at the wedding, and we met in San Diego after randomly talking only to find out that we lived in the same dorm room at UNH 4 years apart! What are the odds of that in San Diego??? Christine moved back to Boston 5 years ago.) After checking out her new condo in Southie (South Boston), we headed over to Castle Island to have a snack, check out the old fort, and relax in the nice ocean breeze.
We then took the T over to Boston Common, here is Avery on the Red Line, her third different rail transit system she's been on (San Diego, DC, and Boston)
At Boston Common we walked around and saw the swan boats
And Avery loved the famous "Make Way for Duckling "sculptures. She was really enamored by them, as you can see from her pointing to them
 |
| "I hearby say that all should make way for these ducklings!" |
We then walked over to the North End for cannoli at a cafe
Avery loves cannoli, just like her daddy!
Then we headed over to the waterfront for dinner and a beer (or three) and enjoyed the great views from the deck.
Sunday (day eight) we headed out to the seacoast to have lunch at Petey's one more time
Then headed on a whale-watching tour boat. One whale breached 29 times in 20 minutes! The whales were only 40-50 yards away doing this too! These are some of our favorite pictures that we captured, amazing!
The ride out and back to "Jeffrey's Ridge", an underwater ridge where whales feed on fish, was a nice 75 minute ride out past the Isles of Shoals, and a great smooth ocean that day put Avery to sleep for pretty much the entire trip
Then we headed up the seacoast to Cape Neddick, Maine to see the famous lighthouse there
The only way for the keepers to get to the island is by this little cart and pulley system, see the cart on the far side of the water?
Afterwards we had dinner by the Portsmouth Harbor overlooking the sailboats.
Monday, (the 9th full day of our trip) our last full day, we headed up to the Sunapee Lake region to enjoy swimming at the crowded beach there. The water was crystal clear (as usual in NH!) and very refreshing.
It was a nice warm clear day, the Sunapee Lake State Beach was very crowded!
After our swim, Avery enjoyed a nice lunch picnic under the shade tree while she dried off
Then went down to the docks so Jim could run and jump off the docks like a little kid and had ice cream by the lakefront. For our last dinner we headed into Concord, NH and ate at Margaritas, a Mexican restaurant in an old city jail house. A lot of the tables are in old jail cells, here we are locked up!
We came back to Manchester to pack up and get ready for our flight home. We were saying how we only got to about half the things we wanted to do, so we should "summer" in NH each year to have 2-3 months to get everything done. There is so much to do here in New England during the summer!
No comments:
Post a Comment