Visiting North Conway, New Hampshire & the White Mountains

I’ve had this trip on my mind for some time now. Like many other folks out there, I tend to do much of my traveling via Google Earth. When I’m not actually in the car driving somewhere nice, I like to use “Street View” to see what an area looks like. I have fun doing this. It gets me out of the house, so to speak.

I’ve been visiting North Conway, NH through my computer for a while and just the other day, I suggested that we actually head out to the real place. North Conway is approximately two and a half hours from where we live, so it took a lot to get me up and motivated to do something like this. If you aren’t aware, one of my least favorite activities is sitting in the car driving. Can’t stand it. But, for the greater good, I made the trip and was excited about it.

There were two things I wanted to see in this town. First was Zeb’s General Store and the second was The Christmas Loft. Both are situated right there on the main drag, so getting to them wouldn’t be too challenging, once we landed in town.

I’m always surprised at how places actually are when compared to how they appear on the computer. Usually, an area is very recognizable when compared to a photograph, but because of the wide angle lens Google uses for the mapping program and because of the lack of ability to discern topography, I’m usually pleasantly surprised when we make it somewhere in person. It always looks better.

For the first part of our trip, driving through the White Mountains was utterly beautiful. I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. We left our house and drove west on Route 2 and then when we arrived in Gorham, NH, we made a left and headed south. We entered the White Mountain National Forest and that’s when the adventure began. Maine was nice and so was New Hampshire, but nothing compared to the size of the White Mountains. Here is Mount Washington, right at the base of the road that leads to the top. I had to pull over to get some shots of this.

Mount Washington is actually the small peak behind the big one in the front. Here’s a better shot of it. It’s the one with the snow and antenna on it.

And because I’m such a whiz when it comes to photography, I put together a really hard to see panorama of the entire view. I still haven’t figured out a better way at displaying these things.

Once we entered the park, we quickly realized that there was no shortage of beautiful views. I kept wanting to pull over to take them in, but I realized that if we did that, we’d never get anywhere. Time was passing quickly and I wanted to get into town to see what it was all about. Although, I did snap a shot of a tunnel that went under the road, so bikes could pass by without getting hit by a car. I thought that was pretty cool. I kept seeing people ride into this lowered area in the grass and disappear and had to see what it was about.

About a half hour later, we got sucked into another beautiful view, so we were forced to pull over for some more photo opportunities. This is Mount Washington from the south, looking north. nice, isn’t it? The location is called the Intervale Scenic Vista.

And here’s another panoramic shot from that location.

It’s just so nice.

Okay, enough of that. Let’s get into North Conway now.

When we finally made it North Conway, we parked and I immediately jumped out of the car to take a photo of the Main Street while it wasn’t that busy. Check it out.

We parked near the town green, which is right near the North Conway Train Station. I saw this online too and I really wanted to see what it looked like, as well as what the trains were all about. So that’s where we headed first. We walked straight across the green and went into the station.

Inside the station, tickets are sold for three different rides. One is about an hour, one is about two hours and one is about five hours. The last one travels all throughout the mountains and must be so much fun to experience. As far as the rest of the station goes, it was more of a gift shop. It contained everything you’d expect it to. Stuffed animals, shirts, small rocks and all the rest. It even showed off different model trains and the such.

Here’s the ticket booth.

And here are some of the colored stones.

I’m really trying to keep these photos to a minimum because I have about a million of them.

After we were finished looking around inside, we went out back to take a look around. There were all sorts of trains out there, along with some autumn decorations and of course, the train tracks. Here are some festive pumpkins on a wagon.

And here are the train tracks themselves.

In this next photo, you’ll notice a sign that says, “Stay Off the Tracks.” I saw that right after I was on the tracks. But this is the coolest train of the lot.

When we were finished up with the trains, we walked into town. The first thing we saw was an old time 5&10 cent store. I thought that was so neat. We used to have one of these in the town I grew up. I miss that place. It seemed to have everything. We used to go there after church on Sunday mornings. This one has been operating for almost 80 years.

After walking around a bit, looking at things, we made it to one of the reasons we visited in the first place. Ah, Zeb’s good old fashioned general store.

We went in and discovered that the store sold pretty much everything under the sun. From jellies and jams to candy and soaps, there was a very wide selection. We actually got sucked into buying some candy. We purchase a pound of licorice for $8. Can you believe that? The tourists we were.

I’m going to post some photos of the store here without description. I’m sure you’ll get the idea of what things were about just by looking at them. This is part of downstairs.

Here’s some of what was upstairs.

And finally, here are two photos of the candy that was downstairs. There was so much more, but you get the idea.

I’ve decided that I’m actually going to leave this post here. I have so many more photos that I’d like to break things up a bit. For my next post, I’ll focus on visiting The Christmas Loft and the covered bridge and general store in Jackson, NH. And then after that, I’ll write one about Bethel, Maine. It’s just too much for this one post. Thanks for reading and stay tuned!