A most beautiful day in New England today. A fat and heavy high pressure system lays sprawled across the eastern states and with it clear skies and moderate temperatures. We woke up early and headed over to our friends, Janet & Paul (& Tucker the golden retriever) for the drive up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Our hike today started in the Franconia Notch area and we were heading up to Franconia ridge via the Falling Waters Trail. It's a beautiful trail, much of the beginning is paralleled by waterfalls, which the dogs really loved. Once we got up to Little Haystack (3.2 miles, 3900 foot elevation gain) we took a much needed lunch break and enjoyed the early autumn scenery. From Little Haystack to Mt. Lafayette you are in Alpine tundra area and above treeline, so the view is panoramic and marvelous. We then hiked the two miles to Mt. Lafayette, which looks much easier on paper than it does on foot, quite craggy with lots of ups and downs. Mt. Lafayette was very busy, the entire women's crew team (boat rowing?) from Northwestern University had hiked up via the Old Bridle Path, so we were surrounded by dozens of tall college girls, few of which really dressed for a day's hike.

If you've never hiked in New England I must point out that every hiking trail I've travelled thus far is quite rocky. This isn't so bad when you are going uphill, sort of like ill-planned stairways, but on the downhill trip it can be an extended knee and calf torture. The Old Bridle Path is about 3.8 miles from Mt. Lafayette to where we parked the car and it was a long and tiring final leg. The guide book calls it "Agony Ridge." At the very end we all, dogs and humans alike, cooled our heels in the ice cold stream by the parking lot. Eight hours after arriving for the hike we fell into the car and headed back home.

Even the dogs are tired, but it's a good tired...right? ":^)

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