If you’ve been following along with my Instagram or keep up with my blog posts, you seen me post about my friend Liz multiple times. We have our summer traditions of hiking together when she’s in New Hampshire for a few weeks each year. Hiking to the Appalachian Mountain Club Huts has become a favorite activity to do together, so we planned to do that again in 2024. It was another memorable year of adventuring together for a few days.
June is lupine season in New Hampshire so our first order of business was to go look for lupine! Sugar Hill is notorious for having beautiful spots to check out lupine, but where this was the end of June, we were on the tail end of the season and most had already died. I had heard about a spot in Orford but I wasn’t sure exactly where to go. I had very limited directions from an article that was in New Hampshire Magazine years prior but we love a good adventures so we decided we’d try to find these lupine fields. We picked up sandwiches from a local gas station and started our journey. As we cruised along on the way to Orford, we saw lots of trees, a church with a soaring spire….and a rocket?! We were both so confused by it and decided that we’d have to check it out more on our way back. After figuring out the road to take for the lupines and where to park, we started walking the dirt road. We hiked a few miles and unfortunately, most of the lupine were passed here too, but we got to see a pretty waterfall, some marshes and bogs and we did find some lupine still going strong .
After we left, we saw a sign for a flower farm down another dirt road, so of course we had to go investigate. The farm was run by a sweet, elderly woman. She told us that she puts together bouquets for co-ops and farmers markets. Liz ended up buying a bouquet from her. It was a really wholesome stop.
On the way out of town, we stopped by the rocket we had seen. It’s located in Warren, a small rural town. Based on the information boards at the site, back in the 1970s, a Warren man named Henry “Ted” Asselin was working at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama and came across some disabled Redstone rockets. Since they were no longer capable of being used, he thought it would be fun to bring one back to his hometown of Warren. The Army approved this, as long as Asselin paid for the transportation himself, which he did! So in 1971, the rocket was erected in the center of town. I love finding random, quirky roadside attractions like this! If you’re in the area, also stop by AppleKnockers, a gas station and general store that has pretty much anything you might need for camping, outdoor adventures or everyday life
Once we got back to Lincoln, where Liz was staying, we freshened up and then headed up to Bethlehem for dinner. We went to Rek’•Lis Brewing for dinner and wow wow wow it was so good! We got the street corn nachos with chicken and they were amazing! It was my first time there and I loved it. After dinner, we strolled down the street to Super Secret Ice Cream, a James Beard Award Nominated ice cream shop. It’s so delicious! We went to bed fairly early because we had to get an early start the next day!
We woke up early the next day so we could get to the trailhead before it filled up. To start, the hike was absolutely wonderful. We took the Airline Trail to Short Line Trail – it wasn’t too steep, the weather was lovely, we didn’t see a lot of other people so the trails were quiet. After a few miles, Short Line turned into King’s Ravine Trail, which featured mossy waterfalls, car-sized boulders and some tight squeezes. Liz really wanted to tackle a trail called Chemin des Dames, which is on New Hampshire’s Terrifying 25 list, so we left Kings Ravine to jump on Chemin des Dames. Honestly, on a sunny, blue sky day, this trail would’ve been fine…however, the higher we went on the trail, the more the fog rolled in and the more scared I got that we were going to get caught in a storm. My anxiety got the better of me – I was so scared.
We were scrambling through a boulder field when all of a sudden Liz realized she lost her phone under a giant boulder. We spent an hour searching for it and trying to get it but then it started to rain. At that point, Liz said it wasn’t worth it to keep looking. We continued on our hike and finally reached the Madison Springs Hut. The summit was another half mile or so from the hut, but the wind had picked up, the summit was socked in and we were both mentally and physically exhausted. We agreed that we should just hangout at the hut for the afternoon and tackle the summit of Mt. Madison the next morning. Even though it was the end of June, it was so cold in the hut. Everyone was bundled up with lots of layers. We did get treated to a beautiful sunset though! It was a very cold night sleeping in the hut and even thought it’s built of stone, you could hear the wind whipping outside all night.
The next morning the winds were just as strong and it was just as cold, albeit sunny. We delayed leaving the hut because we were dreading going outside. We ended up skipping the summit of Madison and decided to just descend. Once we got moving, we warmed up a bit and then when we hit tree line, the temperatures and wind were no longer an issue. The descent was a little slow due to how steep it was, but it was still a nice hike. After enjoying a small snack while soaking our feet in a creek, we made it back to the car.
The first order of business was going to get Liz a new phone – as a mom of three, her not having a phone wasn’t an option! We had a late lunch afterwards in Littleton at Schilling Beer Co., another excellent brewery in the area and one of my favorites in New Hampshire. Afterwards, we went out to Sugar Hill to see if we could see any lupines out that way, but alas, we had no luck. But on our way, we did see an interesting stone sculpture that we wanted to check out. It’s an old Iron Furnace, found along the Gale River. It’s the last blast furnace still standing in New Hampshire! The structure is on someone’s property so you can’t get up close to it but you can view it from across the river. Nearby, just a hundred yards or so down the street, is a brewing called Iron Furnace Brewing Company, so we stopped there to get a beer and a snack. Afterwards, we went back to Liz’s AirBnB, which had a sauna. It was much needed for our sore bodies!
The next day was rainy so instead of playing outside, we did some inside adventures – which consisted of checking out lots of small local businesses in Littleton. A few of the places we went was a record store/art gallery, a candy store, pet store and a huge antique shop. We grabbed lunch at the Littleton Freehouse Taproom, which was very good. Then we went to Wildbloom Beer Co., a cute woman owned brewery on the main street in downtown. After our shopping adventures, I said my goodbyes to Liz and headed back to Southern New Hampshire to where I live.
It’s always hard saying goodbye since I know I usually only get to see Liz once a year (except in 2024 I was lucky and we got to spend lots of time with her during our Colorado trip too!). It’s always something I look forward to though – we have so much fun together, can talk about anything and everything, and just bask in the beauty of nature. I’m so grateful for our friendship!
📍I acknowledge the lands mentioned in this post are the ancestral lands of the Wabanaki (Dawnland Confederacy) and N’dakina (Abenaki / Abénaquis) people.
The Adventures of Suze 
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