Monday, September 28, 2020 - We drove a total of 85 miles today from North Hyde Park, Vermont to Carroll, New Hampshire. It was raining slightly when we started and then cleared up as the trip went on. We encountered beautiful trees all along the way. We feel that we are in the peak "leaf peeping" season right now. It is a little early this year. No problems with the drive and we met Brian and Cass, the owners of the RV Park, upon arrival. They are very nice people from near Portland, Oregon.

This is likely our last stop on our eastward exploration of America for this year. After about five days in northern New Hampshire, we will begin our journey back to Sacramento with hopes of being in Sacramento by mid-November. We plan to head south into North Carolina and then, possibly, head west on Interstate Highway 40 which runs across the country. Nothing is finalized yet, though. We do not have any reservations past our stay here in New Hampshire. Once we get a few days into our stay, we will set about planning our first legs of the return trip. We hope to have some fun on the way at various locations across the country, but our main focus will be to head for California while avoiding any major winter storms that may come along.

After setting up the RV, we decided to take a drive to Sugar Mountain, New Hampshire to check out the terrain and the trees in color. The drive was lots of fun with many small roads lined with colorful trees. It had been raining in the morning, but now the sun was beginning to "poke through," so the colors on the trees were really booming out with the brightness. We drove though many small towns and saw many churches, schools, and meeting halls. These were typical New England style buildings and they looked great.

Tuesday, September 29, 2020 - We drove to the town of Conway, New Hampshire which is the beginning of the scenic drive along the Kancamagus Highway. This highway is about 25 miles long and goes to the town of Lincoln, New Hampshire to the west. This road is known for its wonderful views and scenery. With the trees in full color, the trip was a real treat. The weather was great and the sun was out for nearly the entire day. We stopped at numerous locations to take pictures and videos. I will be assembling a video for the blog shortly so that you can get an idea of what we saw. It was pretty spectacular. I was flying the drone at one location and was confronted by a forest service person who said that I could not drone within one-quarter mile of the main highway. He was very nice and just let me know their rule. If we get off the main road (and there are not too many places to do this), then we can fly the drone. There was another guy flying a drone, but he did not get caught. Throughout the day, we ran across two other drone flyers who also did not get caught. We were driving through the White Mountain National Forest and it is pretty nice. Lots of ski resorts in the area too. We had lunch at a very nice view point which was fun. After that, we drove to the Franconia Notch State Park to go on a hike. There is a paved bike path in this area and a large portion of our hike was on the bike trail. We started our hike at a place called "the Basin." The swirling water of the river has created a circular flow pattern in the rocks which has carved out a basin of water about 15 feet deep. The geography is pretty interesting. There is a "Basin Loop Trail," but we missed the turn and stayed on the bike path. It was still beautiful with cool temps and leaves of all colors covering the trail. After about 4.5 miles of hiking, we drove back to our RV to take a break and download all of the photos and videos.

Wednesday, September 30, 2020 - Through the night rain and high winds rocked the RV to and fro. The wind can make one a little nervous, but it takes quite a bit of wind to blow this rig over. As a precaution, we do put the satellite disk in the "stowed" position so that it has less surface area in the wind. Our goal for today is to go to Littleton, New Hampshire to do our laundry, get haircuts (if we find a barber), and do some shopping for food items. Sometimes we just need to set aside some time for chores.