Franconia Ridge-#1 rated New Hampshire Hike

Franconia ridge hike is the most popular hike in New Hampshire.

Hikers who know both West and East, you know how many trees in the New England. In addition, altitude is not very high in the East compared to West. Thus, a lot of hikes are below treeline, in the forest. Usually only the small portion of a hike is rocky above tree line with view, and many hikes never get out of forest without open views. Based on that, Franconia ridge hike is categorized unusual in New England in a good way. The biggest reason is one third of the hike of 8 miles is on the ridge with quite open view. I totally understand why this is so popular. As you can see in the picture, ridge walk has a good view. 

Due to this popularity, the parking lot is insane. The lot is large, at least 40 cars can be parked, but it will be full by 8 a.m. On this hike we left the Boston area at 4 a.m., and arrived at the parking by 7 a.m. Already 2/3 is full by then. People used to park along the highway because of the situation. The parking along highway was over 1 mile. So.Many.Cars were parked. Yes, you can imagine it is not safe to park along highway. State of New Hampshire thought so too (phew, good), and one day they put a red cone along the highway. Each cone is tied with rope with next cone so that car can't park. The rope-tied corns continues more than 1 mile to north and south. 

In addition to the ridge portion, Franconia falls on the way is pretty. This is another plus for this hike. In contrast to West, East is much more wet, meaning more lakes, river, or falls. Franconia falls have a lot of water due to snow melt in May. This is nice to check it out. Your feet will be wet for river crossing, though. I used to wear waterproof hiking shoes, but some point I switched to non-waterproof. You can stay dry just going through small paddle with waterproof shoes, but if your feet have to go in the river many times? Waterproof shoes get wet and now never get dry. In contrast, non-waterproof shoes can get much quicker when they get wet. If you go for a real adventure, actually non-waterproof shoes work better. 

One more interesting thing about this hike: Greenleaf hut. New England has mountain hut system. You can stop by a hut and most of the time potable water is available. This is nice to take a rest. If you are interested, they sell coffee cake, tea (just tea packs), lemonade, brownies, chips etc. I don't like any of those, so I have never bought them, but if I was in a real hunger, I would. This Greenhut has hut dogs (2 doggies!) and they lay down on the floor. I pet them and they are calm and cute. I love hut pets. European huts usually have cats (probably for rodent hunt). I loved petting those cats during Tour du Mont Blanc. 

Camping at Silver Lake in Vermont

We felt like we wanted to go camping over the weekend. Why not?! We looked at Vermont hiking book and found Silver Lake campground in Vermont interesting. 

This campground is a little different. This is not a car campground, but not really a backcountry campground, either. You need to hike in 0.6 mile into the campground. Another way to reach the campsites is 1 mile of narrow dirt road walk. This is first-come first-served style and there are 15 sites total. 

We left the Boston area around 8:30 a.m and arrived at the trailhead 11:30 a.m. We hike in. Some sites, maybe 5 or so, were already taken, but we were able to secure a good site. 

campsite

One of the missions of this camping was to use hammock! In New England, it is sometimes very hard to find a flat spot to pitch a tent, because trees are so dense. Hammocks solve the problem, but before getting into hammock camping, we wanted to test, because we never slept whole night in a hammock. The picture in the left is our hammocks. I had never slept in hammock for whole night. 

 

 

hammock

My concern was that I didn't know if it would be comfortable to sleep with a body U-shape. As you can see in the left picture it is no way your body lay flat. When I put sleeping bag and pillow inside, pillow sled. I thought, "ummm, maybe I don't need a pillow due to the structure"

 

 

 

Silver Lake

After setting up hammock and sleeping bag, it was lunch time! Tuna sandwich was nice to eat at the Silver lake. This is an artificial lake (reservoir), but it is beautiful. Someone was canoeing--looked fun.  

 

 

 

 

 

Falls of Lana

After lunch is a hiking time. I wanted to see Falls of Lana. It was unclear which point is a fall overlook. Actually signage was wrong. That made it somewhat the hike like a maze, but it was fun! This fall is in the unique shape. It is between the two solid rocks.

 

corn, meat, mashroom

After the hike was dinner! Always, ALWAYS, food is one of highlights of camp, isn't it?
Firstly, as you can see in the left picture, we cooked meat and enoki mashroom in the small frying pan. Of course we don't carry a pan for actual backpacking, but this mini-walk, we can do. It was, sooooo tasty. Then you can see we also cooked corns over the fire. Nom nom nom... 

 

Udon

Then next was cup udon with hard boiled egg. Then finally sweet potato. Sweet potato was wrapped with aluminum foil and cooked in the fire (buried inside) for 2 hours during dinner. I eat cup noodles at only campsites, because it is not very healthy and tasty, but it is great at camping. Then dessert was chocolate. Recently I limit myself from eating too much chocolate, but why not at camping!?

Then we went to sleep in hammock. Well, compared to tent, not so comfortable, but I can do it again. I think. I fell asleep soon after I went inside, BUT I was woken up by somebody's firework sound. Ahhh. SO annoying. It was huge ones. After several fireworks followed by music. It was super disturbing. It was an early season, so a camp host was not yet there. I wished camp host had been there so that s/he could have scolded them. 

Lake in the morning

Finally I went to sleep at some point but not a good sleep, however, morning was pretty. Trees reflected on the calm peaceful lake. 

First thing to do in the morning is to make morning fire. I love evening fire and morning fire as well. After enjoying morning coffee and breakfast over the fire, we did a mini-hike: walk circle along the Silver lake. Nobody there and peaceful (especially on the contrary to fireworks of the night before).

Morning Coffee

Except for noisy rude people at night, it was a nice camping.

Lake