Independence Day Celebration Continues

We continued the fun in NH on the 5th with a visit from Tamara and Ross. They've won the award as our most frequent NH visitors! Congrats y'all! On this trip, we all decided to go for a hike. After much discussion, map looking and changed decisions, we ended up starting on a trail that Mike and I had gone on last November (some pictures of that trip: http://gallery.mac.com/mhines57#100031&bgcolor=black&view=grid). It starts at the Basin in Franconia Notch, which is really cool, very beautiful and I have no pictures of it from this trip there. Up from that, there are lots of cool sights of ledges in the stream and a couple of waterfalls.

The boys seemed to really enjoy climbing out to the rocks and it seemed everytime Tamara and I turned around, they were back out there. Here's a picture of them (enthusiastically) waving to us from their rock perch.

The trail was a pretty popular one that day. I don't think I've ever been on another hike where I ran into so many people. One of the benefits of the crowds is that we had an offer to get a group shot. Normally, the only group shots I get are self portraits, so it was a nice change from the norm. Here we are enjoying lunch.
As I said, there are several falls on this trail. In fact, I think the name of the trail is Kinsman Falls trail. Unfortunately, there was quite the swimming crowd at Kinsman Falls, so I couldn't get a great nature picture of it without lots of half naked strangers. So, here's a picture of Rocky Glen Falls which is a little further up the hike.
At the top of Kinsman Falls, we swung right onto another trail to hop over and see Lonesome Lake. From the maps, it looks like it's about 1000 feet up from the bottom of the notch (where we started). There's a huge AMC hut there - it looked to be about as luxurious as camping gets. We stopped to check out the hut and enjoy the view. And wow! What a view! With Lafayette (a future hike this summer, I hope) in the background, it was breathtaking!
And speaking of views, check out the guns on Tamara!
After circling the lake, we headed down the Lonesome Lake Trail, which dumped us out at the Lafayette Camping Area and then we traversed another 2 miles on the paved bike\hike trail back to the Basin and our car. 6 miles of hiking deserves ice cream. So, we headed into the nearby town of Lincoln for some "Udderly Delicious" treats. Yum! It was a fun day. Thanks for coming up Tamara and Ross!