4 days - Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine Oct 2 - Oct 5 2014 part 1

Because it is autumn now, we had to see the beauty of fall colours. And the best place to see it - Maine! New England area no doubt is a famous place where you can see the fall colours.

Also, if we are already going to Maine, why don't we visit the nearby Vermont and New Hampshire? It's kinda of wasted if we only visit one state in this trip (since we are already driving so many hours there)

With the shortest time (3 and 1/2 days) we can pull out, we managed to visit Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire.


Thurs Night

Drove up from DC to Connecticut after work. By the time we reached Hartford, CT, it was already 2 plus in the morning.


Fri - Day 1

Left really early in the morning and drove 3hrs to Rock of Ages in Vermont. We were in time for the first tour at 9.15am. I was surprised that there are quite a number of people at the tour considering it is not that famous.

Rock of Ages, the world's largest deep-hole dimension granite quarry 

Well, it is an interesting place but we don't feel that it's worth to go there especially with our tight schedule. Quoted from hubs "why do I travel all the way here and wake up early to see rocks?"

Soon after this uninteresting place, we went to Ben and Jerry factory tour (just the sound of it seems yummy, right?)

What's not to be loved about Ben and Jerry's? This is definitely a must do if you are in vermont. At the end of the tour, you will get one free scoop of ice cream. Also, if you go to the ice cream parlor, you could try special flavours that you can't try elsewhere. What's more? There is even a ice cream cemetery at the factory in memory of those flavours that "died". How cool is that!

Ice cream cemetary

This ends our tour in Vermont. 

After Vermont, our initial plan was to take the Kancamagus Highway and to Mount Washington Auto road. However, not much information could be found on Kancamagus Highway when I was doing the research for our trip. We stopover at the New Hampshire visitor center and asked the kind lady for help with Kancamagus Highway. Kancamagus Highway will take longer time than we thought and we will not have time to go to both Kancamagus Highway and Mount washington auto road. Damn Rock of Ages! We really should have skipped that.

We decided to go mount washington auto road. On the way there, we saw many beautiful scenery and fall colours. 

Finally, we reached the entrance of Mount Washington Auto Road. The line for cars to go in was really long. If you are intending to go there, be there at least half an hour before it close. You don't want to be stuck in the line and didn't even have to chance to go in!

 A cd will be given to you at the entrance which you could listen to as you drive up and down the mountain. One more thing to note is that your car need to have the Gear 1 function to be allowed to drive up the mountain. You will need to use Gear 1 to drive up the mountain to prevent overheating.

On the way up...

And we have finally reached the peak of the mountain!

You can choose to take the train to the peak if you don't want to drive up the mountain

After Mount Washington, it's time for us to leave New Hampshire for Maine. Along the way, we managed to see the picturesque sunset.

After driving for another 4hours plus, we reached North east Harbour, Maine, which is near where we are heading to the next day (Acadia National park).

By the time we reached Maine it was already dark and most of the small towns hotels do not have bright lights like chain hotels. We had a hard time locating our hotel (we circle the town like 4 times) but when we finally found our accommodation (Colonel's Suites) for the night, we were pleased with our choice. 

The accommodation was a really nice place and they provided us with a very good free breakfast (it was a surprise for us because it was not stated in our expedia booking).

As i felt to Maine deserve to have one post of its own, so, this trip will be continued in the next post...