Sue and I left early Friday morning 09/28 for a fall foliage vacation to Sugar Hill, NH. We wound our way over a more scenic route taking almost 5 hours to our hotel, the historic Sunset Hill House.

We took Rt. 4 over to Concord, NH and then jumped onto 93 north, getting off of that in Lincoln, NH and onto Rt. 112 through the countryside.

The foliage was so pretty despite how overcast it was, sometimes even raining. It did break for just a few minutes and Sue got some interesting pictures at Beaver Pond. We drove up through the Woodsville area and then stopped for lunch at the Happy Hour Restaurant across the Connecticut River in Wells River, VT, a place Sue was quite familiar with when she lived up in this area many years ago.

After lunch, we stopped for quite awhile at the famous covered bridge in Bath, NH, and then breezed through The Brick Store - "America's Oldest General Store". From there, it was just beautiful drive over the secondary roads to Sugar Hill, NH where we pulled into the Sunset Hill House.

I had made dinner reservations at a place Sue had found called The Horse and Hound Inn in Franconia, NH. I had just asked to eat in the tavern vs. in the main dining room as we just wanted to be somewhat casual for our first night out. But what a beautiful place! And the food and service were just spectacular.

In fact, we met and had such an interesting conversation with both owners, Ron and Ken, that Sue went out and got her camera out of the car. She took quite a few inside shots of the downstairs part of the inn for them as they were commenting that they really didn't have any good fall season pictures. It was such a beautiful place that Sue asked if we could come back Saturday during the day and take outside pictures for them. Now, that's how you have fun - getting to meet great people and then participating in some small way with them in their passion.

Saturday, we just drove for hours through the back roads enjoying the beauty around us. We did return for an hour or so to The Horse and Hound Inn. Before doing outside shots, they asked if she would be interested in taking more shots downstairs and then of some of the bedrooms upstairs. They did such a spectacular restoration of this property. Both Sue and I were so impressed and she was excited to capture it all in her photographs, some of which they posted to the website almost as soon as she got the pictures to them. Just a nice side to our trip.

Dinner Saturday night was at the more formal Sunset Hill House. After taking a shower to get the day's road dust off us and getting changed, we went down to the hotel's guest living area, had a glass of wine, and played backgammon until it was time to go in and have dinner. Another outstanding dinner for our trip! We had such a good time that after dinner, we went back into the living room, had another glass of wine, and played backgammon until we got so tired that we dragged ourselves off to bed.

Sunday, we were up early so we could have a little more leisurely breakfast at the inn before heading out for our return drive home. It was windy with misty light rain all the way down Rt 93 where we got off in Plymouth. We decided to drive though Holderness, NH and Center Harbor, NH at the top of Lake Winnipesaukee. From there, we turned south in Moultonborough, NH and came down the eastern shore of the lake through Wolfeboro, NH. What a beautiful stretch of road all that is!

Once we got to Alton Bay at the south side of the lake, we were on auto pilot for the rest of the trip home. When we got there, we just sort of collapsed and regrouped for the new week. A really enjoyable, relaxing trip where we were fortunate to have caught the absolute best part of fall foliage in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.