Northern Exposure

As a final hurrah and so-long-it's-been-good-to-know-ya for the summer, we spent this past weekend in northern New Hampshire at Story Land. We've been meaning to take the girls up there for years, but just never got around to it. It's about a four hour drive from our house, so it requires a bit of planning and an overnight stay, but the park is geared towards smaller kids, so we needed to get on the ball before Maggie begins to age out of it.

There are lots of family resorts and hotels in North Conway that cater to skiers or people who are taking their kids to Story Land or Santa's Village. I combed through so many travel websites looking for just the right thing because we were only planning a very quick, one-night stay after driving up Friday night after school and before hitting the park early Saturday morning. We didn't need a on-site water park or a huge playground and pool, just a comfy place to sleep. It came down to a brand new chain hotel in North Conway or the Eagle Mountain House historic hotel in Jackson, NH, up in the woods a few miles north of the park. We went for the historic hotel, and it was perfect. Even the girls loved it and were excited to stay in such a special place.

photo from Wikipedia

Check out the two-story porch!

The White Mountains

We had a small sitting room with a fold-out couch.

Oh how I wish we'd had time (and warmer weather) to sit and drink our coffee on the porch!

Instead, Mags got a pumpkin muffin and hot apple cider at Dunkies. She loves the cooler weather and wanted to stay in the mountains forever!

After our quick stop for breakfast, we stood in the long line of people waiting to get into Story Land -- keep in mind that this was 9:30 in the morning on a September Saturday after the start of the school year AND we were expecting a rainy, overcast day with a high of 60F. I can't imagine what the place is like in the middle of August!

However, despite the crowds and the clouds and the drizzle, the girls had a fabulous time. Maggie is completely fearless and will ride anything with her hands in the air. And Kate could barely stand to walk normally -- she skipped and galloped all over the park.

Yes, this ride was flying wooden shoes.

This was a big room with a second-floor catwalk where you could shoot foam balls out of pneumatic guns and cannons. It was wild!

Face paint! Pink and purple cat faces, of course. Mike said it was like spending the day with KISS.

Pretending to fall off the wall (or maybe push Humpty Dumpty off?)

This was the coolest carousel ever! It's an antique from Germany, and the horses are on rockers instead of poles. It's the weirdest feeling - when you rock back, it feels like the carousel is slowing down, and then it's seems to shoot forward when you rock back up. Mike was making fun of me, but I'm glad I went on it!

After the rain started coming down around 4:30, we finally had to run back to the car and leave, but we squeezed in a full (chilly) day. We stopped at Mike's parents' on the way home to spend the night and see the cousins, which wrapped up the weekend perfectly.

Cozy Cousins

I have a ton of photos of all the adventures we went on this summer which I never got around to writing about here -- because I was on adventures! I'm putting together a series of posts about all the things we've been up to, so stay tuned for more photos of my kids in strange places around New England.

(Don't roll your eyes. You know you're excited!)