The White Mountains

Last week we finally checked out the White Mountains and were so impressed!

We are not very spontaneous people, but this trip was completely spur of the moment. We dropped Bryn off to preschool and in the few hours she was at school and Josh and I decided to go to the White Mountains, booked a super cheap hotel, packed up our car, and then picked up Bryn and made the 2 hour drive to our destination. And it was a great trip!

Our "hotel" turned out to be this interesting little cabin situation with the sketchiest pool/hot tub I've ever swam in, but the girls had a blast and it was a fun little getaway for a night.

Our first hike was to Diana's Baths and it was beautiful!

As a sidenote, we actually found this Kelty hiking backpack in our dumpster in Huntington Beach...which maybe I shouldn't admit! We normally don't dumpster dive (I promise!), but I must say this was a good steal because we've certainly put it to good use!

We saw great reviews online for Leavitt's Country Bakery (about 10 minutes from Diana's Baths) so of course we had to check it out. Best. Donuts. Ever.

I'm not even a huge donut person but these were so good! We tried a few different kinds, but I think their simple glazed donuts were our favorite. Definitely check them out if you're in the area.

Also, of note in the area was this cute little llama farm.

Surprisingly there is a great outlet mall in the White Mountains! We spent a good hour or two doing some shopping at the outlets - which was perfect since we live an hour and a half from our nearest mall and we needed to get Josh some new business clothes for his new job. We got lots of good stuff and so it was pretty awesome! It was funny because we went to the White Moutains for the hiking, but ended up with the bonus of some outlet shopping.

After the outlets and some yummy bagel sandwiches at Big Dave's Bagels (which came highly recommended and didn't let us down), we headed to the Flume Gorge. This hike was a two mile loop and it was really pretty amazing - probably the coolest hike we've ever done as a family. 

(Sorry for the picture overload. I really did narrow it down, but we took about a million pictures because there were so many cool parts).

I'm so glad we got a chance to explore the White Mountains before we move from New Hampshire. We could have spent a lot more time there with all the other hikes and look-out points, but we loved the time we had. We really are going to miss beautiful New Hampshire!