Summer Adventures, Part Four

After the week of our Vermont and Star Island trips, I got pretty sick with a virus we'd been passing around the family all summer. We spent a week just watching TV and playing Minecraft (the girls) and lolling on the couch while coughing (me). By the time I felt better, I realized that the summer was winding down and we hadn't done some of the outings with Gram that we had hoped to do. So Mike's mom and I made a plan to meet up and take the girls to the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center. She surprised us with a side trip to Cannon Mountain to take the tram to the top and have a picnic first! It was the perfect day for it.

Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway is part of the Franconia Notch State Park in the White Mountain National Forest. Interstate 93 passes right through the Franconia Notch mountain pass, so Cannon Mountain is easy to get to and the drive up is absolutely gorgeous. It's a ski resort in the winter, but in warmer months, the entire state park is laced with hiking and biking trails, including part of the Appalachian Trail. There are bike rentals and the New England Ski Museum at the base of Cannon, and Echo Lake Beach is next to it.

We went up to the visitor's center, had lunch on the observation deck, and hiked the short summit trail which takes you to an observation tower on the opposite side of the peak.

After we took the tram back down the mountain, we headed south to Holderness to our original destination, the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center. [Note: Holderness is where On Golden Pond was filmed.]

The Center is a walking trail through the woods and marshes with native animal habitats and educational exhibits along the way. They have deer, black bears, bobcats, coyotes, mountain lions, otters, foxes, etc., all under a shady canopy of green trees around a small brook, pond, and wetland area. It's a great place to go on a hot day in the summer.

Black Bears

The boardwalk through the marsh

You can also pass through the Kirkwood Gardens from the Science Center to get to the Holderness Inn, which has a café and a shop selling local art and crafts.

If you squint, you can see the girls running laps across the lawn. Where do they get all that energy?

Dancing under the pergola where they host weddings.

After ALL OF THIS we were exhausted and starving, so we stopped at the Common Man Restaurant in Ashland to have a very nice dinner, complete with a frosty bottle of root beer. Cheers, Gram!

The VERY NEXT DAY (and after a sleepover at Gram and Grandpa's house) we took the subway into Boston to catch the ferry to the Boston Harbor Islands National Park to spend the afternoon on Spectacle Island -- because we are gluttons for fun and punishment, I guess.

The ferry leaves directly from the waterfront downtown (so the girls were able to run around on the playground in Columbus Park while we waited for our ferry time), and there are 34 islands, 12 of which have camping, hiking, swimming beaches, and/or historical sites on them.

Spectacle Island is just 15 minutes from the city and is a great choice for a day trip because it has a visitors center with a snack bar and bathrooms, a swimming beach (with lifeguards), picnic areas, and walking trails. There is also a marina for private boats and an event venue -- they were setting up small fire pits and wheeling in catering carts as we were leaving! How fun would that be?

Look! You can see Boston from the pier and the beach! It's pretty weird to be on a little island with the city RIGHT THERE.

Never have I ever seen so much sea glass and broken china (Kate insisted on calling them "cup parts") on one beach. They actually have a mural made of sea glass and exhibits on the stuff that has washed up there in the visitors center.

The girls also got to do a little splashing on the beach, even though it's pretty rocky and it wasn't a terribly warm day.

Under the pier was their absolute favorite place on the whole island!

After two days of fun and more fun, we were beat! The girls slept and slept and I washed some Motrin down with a pot of coffee. But it was tons of fun, and I definitely want to explore more of the Harbor Islands next summer. There's always so much more to see...

... like the Duck Tour of Boston, for instance. Can you stand to hear about ONE MORE excursion?? Well, hold on there for just a couple more minutes, here we go...

Our school district has kind of a weird schedule at the beginning of the year. Maggie started a week before Kate, and the second Tuesday (the day before Kate started) happened to be an election day, so their school was closed as a polling station! So we had three days of school, a weekend, one day of school, a day off, and then Kate's first day. So weird. But it was a good excuse to run downtown again to squeeze in one more day of fun.

I asked the girls what they wanted to do: Visit our modern art museum (the ICA -- we've already done the MFA)? Run around the Common and do the swan boats in the Public Garden? Children's Museum?

They wanted to do a Duck Tour. It's pretty pricey and parts of it are kind of slow for small kids, but they loved splashing into the Charles River and seeing the city from the water. They even both got to drive the boat and honk the horn -- and the Con-duck-tour (ha?) gave them a TON of stickers. So fun!

And that's it. Our summer, in four parts. We really sucked the marrow out of it, I think. I always feel the most thankful for living in this amazing city, and New England in general, in the summertime when we get out of our winter cave of hibernation and see and do so many wonderful things in such a short time. There's an incredibly huge range of stuff to see and places to go -- city, country, mountains, ocean, historic sites, forests, museums -- and all of it so very close by. We've seen and done a ton of it and have barely made a dent.

I'll have to start making a list of things to do next summer right away, but for now it's time to start thinking about apple picking and pumpkin patches. Yesterday was the first day of Autumn, and we noticed the leaves changing on the tips of some of the trees along Route 2. I'll think I'll make some tomato soup for dinner tonight!

Summer Adventures, Part Three

Up next on our Summer of Fun was our annual daytrip to Star Island with my friend Erin. This was our fourth consecutive year to go! Here's the post from our first trip out with the girls in 2011. Erin and I have also been out by ourselves for a weekend Women's Retreat last September, which was a wonderfully relaxing getaway from the outside world, as Star is meant to be. We always have a good time out there.

Mags loves loves loves a ferry.

Our next order of business was to finally get ourselves over to the new Legoland with Mike and Kate. I went as a chaperone on Maggie's class trip last Spring, but of course little sisters weren't invited on a school trip, and Kate was deeply, mournfully, disappointed. I think Mike was also secretly a little jealous!

Underneath the giant Lego giraffe out front

It's not a very big place, but there are a few rides and a climbing area, a 4D movie theater (I guess the 4th "D" is that there's wind and snow and lighting effects in the theater at certain points during the movie), and several building centers with tons of bricks. There's also a room with a huge model of Boston made out of Legos, which was my favorite part. The climbing structure was probably the girls' favorite thing, and Mike seemed to enjoy the area where you could build cars and race them down a ramp.

The State House, Boston Common/Public Garden, and the Swan Boats -- obviously not to scale.

There's even a little window under the display of Back Bay where you can see Cheers below the street level!

BUT WAIT! Don't go yet... I totally forgot to include these pictures at the very beginning of the series! We went on a quick afternoon trip with Mike's family to Hampton Beach on July 4th weekend to see the sandcastle contest entries (and eat ice cream and splash in the water a little bit).

There wasn't a single picture where they ALL looked like they didn't hate having their picture taken, so I chose this one because Elizabeth looks the cutest. C'est la vie.

Who would've thought a prairie girl like me would be raising beach girls like these two! They take after their Gram.

Stay Tuned! Tomorrow (or maybe Wednesday): Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway, Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, Spectacle Island, and a Duck Tour!

Summer Adventures, Part One

As I said in my last post, now that the girls are off to school and things are quieter around the house during the day, I have a chance to go back through our photos and think about all the fun things we did over the summer. We had an exceptionally good time and I know the girls made a lot of great memories.

Besides our trip to Indianapolis and Niagara Falls, which I've already written about here, we went to York's Wild Kingdom, saw all the cousins, drove up to Vermont to see the girls' first real concert at the Shelburne Museum, did our annual daytrip to Star Island, checked out the brand new LEGOLAND, rode up Cannon Mountain in a cable car, visited the Squam Lake Science Center, took the ferry out to the Boston Harbor Islands, and did a Duck Tour! [Deep breaths]

It will be rather appropriate for me to jump now from our summer-ending trip to ride roller coasters in New Hampshire to our summer-beginning trip to ride roller coasters in Maine.

Can you spot Maggie? Do you think she's having fun?

The school year here lasts until the very end of June, which normally isn't a big deal because it's still Spring weather then, and I actually prefer for them not to have too long of a stretch without school -- eight weeks is plenty, really! By the end of last May, though, I was just dying to get out and run around New England with the girls to see some sights. Mike's mom is a teacher [for those (maybe one) of you who might be reading and don't know me aren't my cousin], and she's usually out for the summer the week before us, so we kicked off the break ASAP on an adventure with Gram.

York's Wild Kingdom is in York, ME, just over the border from New Hampshire and a day trip for us. It's a pretty amazing place: a nice little zoo and amusement park that exits right out into town just a few blocks from a gorgeous beach. We did animals in the morning, roller coasters in the afternoon, and made it to the far side of the park just in time to get coffee and saltwater taffy in town and run on the beach for a bit. It's a superb day trip for kids. I can't recommend it enough.

One of the coolest things about the zoo was the enclosure where you could feed white-tailed deer who just wandered around freely and fearlessly. They have a good mix of exotic and domestic animals.

Hey, buddy.

Tiger Lilies (and some orange flowers)



This ride, somewhat strangely, was their favorite of all. It's a caterpillar. I'm gonna guess it was built in the '60s and is covered in tetanus.

York Beach

Gram and Maggie are expert treasure hunters.

After this daytrip, we were gone for a week on our half-way-across-country road trip to visit my family in Indiana. As soon as we got home, we quickly did our laundry and trekked back up to Gram and Grandpa's house where the girls' cousins were all together for a long weekend. There was so much chaos with five girls (plus the neighbors' bunch of kids) that I really didn't get very many pictures at all, but here are a few:

Minecraft-apalooza!

Just to prove that it wasn't all staring at screens... Kate did a puppet show for Caroline...

...and Maggie and Ana were bonkers for the neighbor's horses.

...there was also some kickball, bikes and scooters, crafts, costumes, and s'mores. Good times.

Stay tuned for my next installment, in which Maggie and Kate go to their very first real concert in the Green Mountains of Vermont overlooking Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks. Don't tell me these kids don't lead a charmed life!

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!)