September is beautiful in NH. I can't promise every day will be a blue sky, 70-80 degree day, but that has been our experience 3 years in a row visiting with our kids. Maybe we've just been lucky? Try for yourself!
This year we stayed in Jefferson, NH and our kids loved the day we spent at Santa's Village. On the second day of our weekend adventure, we explored Franconia Notch State Park, specifically the Flume Gorge trail and Echo Lake Beach. It was such a fun day with the kids and we think we might even repeat the same weekend next fall!
For years I'd driven by signs for the Flume Gorge on our way back from North Conway. I'd always wondered about it, and when I realized it would be a convenient stop along our drive back to Boston from Jefferson, I was excited to finally check it out. About 40 minutes south from Jefferson, after enjoying the stunning mountain scenery as we drove through Franconia Notch (having missed this view when we arrived in the dark two days earlier), we pulled off Route 93 (exit into the parking lot of the Visitor's Center. Entering the visitor's center, the kids ran around checking out the displays (our 3-year-old was particularly entertained by the stuffed moose's bum!). Plenty of conveniences offered here: a full service cafeteria, where you can stock up on snacks for your hike or stop afterward for hot lunch, restrooms, water fountains to fill your bottles, area tourist info and plenty of interesting historic displays related to the history of the Flume Gorge as a tourist attraction since the early 1800s.
We purchased our tickets ($16 for adults, $14 for children up to 12, free for children 5 and under. The NH state park system is self-supporting- no taxpayer support) and then followed signs through the back door of the lodge and out into the woods. The trail is a 2-mile round trip, totally doable with small kids (as long as you bring snacks to bribe them along the way, in our experience). There were so many fun things to discover even from the start of the hike. Huge glacial erratic boulders. A quaint covered bridge. Table Rock, a broad flat exposed section of granite being slowly smoothed by flowing waters.
The Flume Gorge, which we encountered less than a half mile into the hike, is a narrow valley only 12 to 20 ft wide and with walls of granite rising 70 to 90 feet above the flowing water of Flume Brook. The path through the gorge consists of winding wooden walkways suspended from the walls and balancing over the brook. It's breathtaking. While I would love to say that we took in the natural beauty in solitude, in reality the path is well-traveled by busloads of tourists, including (on the day we visited) lots of people speaking European languages and lots of retirees. Strangely, considering we were on a long walk through the woods, up the side of a mountain, along paths of dirt and rock and mud, we saw way too many people inappropriately dressed for the outdoor adventure (we passed one elegantly dressed couple in their 70s, she wearing chunky heeled sandals and he wearing the shiniest leather dress shoes I've ever seen).
At the top of the gorge (about 0.6 miles into your hike), the trail signs offer the option of the Rim Path, which appears to head downhill parallel to the flume, rejoining the same path you just came up, or the Ridge Path, which continues in a loop for another 1.3 miles back to the Visitor's Center. I'm pretty sure most people took the shorter Rim Path back, because the crowd seriously thinned out from here forward (and we lost all the inappropriately dressed hikers!). This section of the hike was well worth it! Stunning views of a waterfall at Liberty Gorge, another covered bridge, and beautiful mountain scenery through the trees.
Back at the bottom, we enjoyed a hot lunch at the visitor's center cafeteria (I highly recommend the Boise Rock Burger!) and then made our way less than 10 minutes back north to check out Echo Lake Beach (recommended by the park guides when we asked for somewhere to go swimming). We found the name a bit confusing, since we have often visited Echo Lake State Park in North Conway, but this is a different lake.
We paid $10 for our family of four to enter (kids under 5 free again) and were super impressed to find a sandy beach, clear lake with stunning views of Canon Mountain ski area and Franconia Notch, nicely maintained rest rooms/ changing rooms, picnic tables with grills nearby, boats available for rent, and a small general store selling snacks, ice cream treats, and sand toys. We stayed for about 2 hours; the kids made friends and sand castles, Mohit took a nap, and the ducks took special interest in us when we purchased ice cream and dripped it all over the ground eating outside. It was a bit too cold for swimming in the chilly water, but it was a great last hurrah to our fun weekend nevertheless. When we finally hit the road for our drive back to Boston, BOTH kids fell asleep immediately. Success!
This year we stayed in Jefferson, NH and our kids loved the day we spent at Santa's Village. On the second day of our weekend adventure, we explored Franconia Notch State Park, specifically the Flume Gorge trail and Echo Lake Beach. It was such a fun day with the kids and we think we might even repeat the same weekend next fall!
For years I'd driven by signs for the Flume Gorge on our way back from North Conway. I'd always wondered about it, and when I realized it would be a convenient stop along our drive back to Boston from Jefferson, I was excited to finally check it out. About 40 minutes south from Jefferson, after enjoying the stunning mountain scenery as we drove through Franconia Notch (having missed this view when we arrived in the dark two days earlier), we pulled off Route 93 (exit into the parking lot of the Visitor's Center. Entering the visitor's center, the kids ran around checking out the displays (our 3-year-old was particularly entertained by the stuffed moose's bum!). Plenty of conveniences offered here: a full service cafeteria, where you can stock up on snacks for your hike or stop afterward for hot lunch, restrooms, water fountains to fill your bottles, area tourist info and plenty of interesting historic displays related to the history of the Flume Gorge as a tourist attraction since the early 1800s.
We purchased our tickets ($16 for adults, $14 for children up to 12, free for children 5 and under. The NH state park system is self-supporting- no taxpayer support) and then followed signs through the back door of the lodge and out into the woods. The trail is a 2-mile round trip, totally doable with small kids (as long as you bring snacks to bribe them along the way, in our experience). There were so many fun things to discover even from the start of the hike. Huge glacial erratic boulders. A quaint covered bridge. Table Rock, a broad flat exposed section of granite being slowly smoothed by flowing waters.
The Flume Gorge, which we encountered less than a half mile into the hike, is a narrow valley only 12 to 20 ft wide and with walls of granite rising 70 to 90 feet above the flowing water of Flume Brook. The path through the gorge consists of winding wooden walkways suspended from the walls and balancing over the brook. It's breathtaking. While I would love to say that we took in the natural beauty in solitude, in reality the path is well-traveled by busloads of tourists, including (on the day we visited) lots of people speaking European languages and lots of retirees. Strangely, considering we were on a long walk through the woods, up the side of a mountain, along paths of dirt and rock and mud, we saw way too many people inappropriately dressed for the outdoor adventure (we passed one elegantly dressed couple in their 70s, she wearing chunky heeled sandals and he wearing the shiniest leather dress shoes I've ever seen).
At the top of the gorge (about 0.6 miles into your hike), the trail signs offer the option of the Rim Path, which appears to head downhill parallel to the flume, rejoining the same path you just came up, or the Ridge Path, which continues in a loop for another 1.3 miles back to the Visitor's Center. I'm pretty sure most people took the shorter Rim Path back, because the crowd seriously thinned out from here forward (and we lost all the inappropriately dressed hikers!). This section of the hike was well worth it! Stunning views of a waterfall at Liberty Gorge, another covered bridge, and beautiful mountain scenery through the trees.
My son's favorite part was just past the covered bridge, where we investigated a small side trail noted as "The Wolf's Den". At the end of a narrow crevice, we turned into a dim cave, where my son clambered over dripping wet boulders and through a narrow opening...and then popped out on top and onto wooden stairs, where he promptly scrambled back down to the bottom to repeat the adventure twice more. Little sister was NOT interested in the dark cave, so we went around the easy way. Mohit tried to squeeze through but it turns out the crevice is a much better fit for skinny 6-year-olds.
We paid $10 for our family of four to enter (kids under 5 free again) and were super impressed to find a sandy beach, clear lake with stunning views of Canon Mountain ski area and Franconia Notch, nicely maintained rest rooms/ changing rooms, picnic tables with grills nearby, boats available for rent, and a small general store selling snacks, ice cream treats, and sand toys. We stayed for about 2 hours; the kids made friends and sand castles, Mohit took a nap, and the ducks took special interest in us when we purchased ice cream and dripped it all over the ground eating outside. It was a bit too cold for swimming in the chilly water, but it was a great last hurrah to our fun weekend nevertheless. When we finally hit the road for our drive back to Boston, BOTH kids fell asleep immediately. Success!
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