White Mountain Weekend

To make up for our brief absence in June, we had to take the dogs out on a dog-centric long weekend. OK, that was just an excuse to get out there in the wilderness and do nothing but hike, cook, eat and chill. Ideally we would have liked an Internet-less, phone-free, camping type weekend, but given the small lead time we had to plan for the weekend, we decided to let civilization intrude somewhat in our nature getaway. We found a "chalet", which was essentially a one story dwelling, with two bedrooms, a single bath and a fully equipped kitchen (microwave, fridge, oven, toaster, cutlery and pots and pans). This chalet came with an attic which had a futon that could sleep one hobbit comfortably. Well, it could probably sleep one human, but anyone over 5'5" would have to anticipate being walloped on the head at least once by a solid wood door frame. But, as any real estate agent would say, it is all in the location, location, location! And White Mountains, NH does not lack in the location department.

Kinsman Falls: Our second hike of the trip was to the Kinsman Falls on the Basin-Cascade trail in the White Mountains. The trail head starts just off of Highway 93 and begins tamely enough with a nice little stream with a bridge over it.

This followed by a teeny little shallow wade pool where the basin was located. Loads of tourists including kids were wallowing in the pool.

Our Dufus and Diva had a mandatory paw wetting in this pool.



The trail soon turned steep and the trail floor were filled with roots, which caused some difficulty for one of the dogs.

Yes, they are Collies. No, I am still not over my anger with the groomer for having shaved them so completely. But the silver lining is that Diva is 2.5 lbs lighter, which I am sure her arthritic hip appreciated a lot.

The trail got progressively steeper and rockier (no pics though, because we were too busy negotiating the trail to take any pics) and had a lot of tree branches to duck under. But it was all worth it, because to the left us, was the first rocky "bed" of the Kinsman Falls.

Where we had the opportunity to take some pictures and relax a bit and even catch the view of the mountains from the Falls.

We tried walking up the trail a little further, but the trail had narrowed to almost nothing and pretty soon there were no more blue markers. It was obvious that we had missed the rest of trail and it was getting close to sunset. So we decided to get back to the trail and begin our descent back to the basin and out.

That night we made pizza (with a spicy chickpeas, kale, peppers, mushroom, tomato, olives, onion) topping as well as pasta with arabiata sauce (with chickpeas, kale, tomato, onions, green peppers, basil, oregano). Hey there are differences between the two! The pizza was dutiful set aside for lunch next day because it would be so much easier to pack slices of pizza for the trail.

We ended the night by playing a game of Alhambra. 

(To be Continued ..........)

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