The Basin

Sun, Aug 26

Twin Mountain, NH: Cloudy, foggy, and cool this morning. Not a promising day to go to the top of Mt. Washington. So we headed back to the Franconia Notch to see The Basin and The Old Man of the Mountain. Stopped and had a wonderful breakfast in Twin Mountain. We both had steak and eggs. Really good. The Basin is just a geological formation worn by water which formed this basin in the rock. Pretty hike though. The Old Man in the Mountain was a bunch of boulders jutting out from the top of one of the mountains in the Franconia Notch which looked like an old man in profile. After years of trying to stabilize, the boulders came down during the night in 2003. Then we drove over another notch west of Franconia. Saw two bucks. On the way back to our campsite we drove up the road past the campground. Turned into a dirt road pretty quickly. The dirt road was better than the paved road. Followed a pretty stream all the way. There are more hiking trails up here—one which followed the stream. Most of them go up the mountain. And no switchbacks. No thanks. Tomorrow we leave this beautiful campground and go to Mountain Lake Campground—only about 20 miles north of here. Not a really great commercial campground (most of them aren’t), but we’re there only 3 nights.