New Hampshire in Early Fall

We took a quick, long-weekend trip up to New Hampshire to visit our friends, Amy and Jeremy, thanks to a wonderfully cheap airfare I found ($130 RT each!) into Manchester.  This was a late birthday present for Ashlee who is close friends with Amy.  We hadn't seen these guys in over a year since we took a great Caribbean cruise together back in February 2010. 
See the blog entries: http://collagebarrage.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_archive.html

The thought of checking out early fall in New England was also a bonus since Amy and Jeremy live in the lovely coastal town of Portsmouth about 45 minutes east of  Manchester.

Saturday,  September 24, 2011:  Fresh off the plane, our first stop once we got into the Portsmouth area was the east coast branch of Red Hook Brewing, a great craft beer pioneer which originated in Washington state.  We grabbed a late light lunch in their cool brewpub and took the 3 PM brewery tour which cost $2 and was chock full of samples!  Salute!



After resting up a bit and settling into Amy and Jeremy's spare bedroom of their apartment in downtown Portsmouth, we strolled a few blocks toward the waterfront and had dinner at on of their favorite places, Spring Hill Tavern.  This bar in the basement of The Dolphin Striker Restaurant serves up great seafood from upstairs.  Our choices were the Chilean sea bass cooked Asian-style for Ashlee, and the lobster omelet for me.  Delicious!

Sunday, September 25, 2011:  We all slept in this morning and by the time we had collected ourselves, our stomachs were grumbling for some lunch and we decided on a place we couldn't get into the night before due to it being so crowded, The Portsmouth Brewery.  I appreciate Amy and Jeremy accommodating my always-fervent interest in craft beer, but even they admitted that as usual in good brewpubs,  the food is darn good as well.  More on the brews themselves will be in my beer blog soon.




After lunch we strolled down to the beautiful, busy and historic Portsmouth Harbour.  We bought in for the 3 PM harbour cruise on the MV Heritage.  As we waited to board our hour-and-a-half-long cruise, we checked out the waterfront which offered dramatic views of the swift-moving Piscataqua River as it surged out to sea and the charming views such as the chubby Moran Tugboats (above) tied up at dock taking a well-deserved Sunday off.

  





  The weather, which had been rainy the day before we arrived and overcast on Saturday with some sprinkles of rain, cooperated beautifully for our harbour cruise.  The sun emerged from the breaking clouds giving up warm temps and beautiful views north to southern Maine, Whaleback Lighthouse (above in the distance), the Portsmouth Harbour Light,  Newcastle Island and the distant Isles of Shoals to the east and the Atlantic Ocean beyond.  We finished the evening with cocktails at the very cool bar, The Library, and grilling out back at Amy and Jeremy's on a wonderful early fall evening in New England.







Monday, September 26, 2011 - While Jeremy had to unfortunately head to work for the day, Amy had the day off and we decided to head north into the White Mountains for the day.  The weather was perfect and the leaves were already starting to change as we gained altitude.

 

Our main destination in the vast White Mountain  National Forest was Mt. Washington, the highest point in the Northeastern United States.  We took the self-guided Auto Road all the way to the top.

At the summit of Mt. Washington was a very cool visitors center and several historical buildings including the small observatory used back in 1934 when the highest surface wind speed ever recorded by man was clocked at 231 MPH, hence the chains on the building preventing it from blowing away.



Not bad for a Monday....








 The Mt. Washington summit is frequently shrouded by cloud cover, but we were fortunate to pick a very clear day to visit.  Despite a bit of haze, the Presidential Range of the White Mountains, to the south was stunning.  Here above the tree line, the landscape took on a very different look and reminded us a lot of Iceland.






 The Auto Road coming up and down Mt. Washington reveals some amazing views.  The above shot was taken as we descended back down the winding, tiny road which is glaringly absent of guardrails!

We concluded our trip with a pretty cool Haunted Pub Walk in downtown Portsmouth that evening.  After saying our goodbyes to Amy and Jeremy the next morning, we headed back to the airport.  What was supposed to be a short trip back to get us home by the late afternoon turned into a fairly long and grueling day of flight delays in Manchester and our connector city, Philadelphia.  Heavy fog that morning in Philly had disrupted the whole day of flights, but we finally made it home late that evening exhausted but content with our brief visit to see our friends and the lovely area in which they live.