The White Mountains.

Last weekend, Don and I took a mini vacation to the White Mountains in New Hampshire!  I was really, really ready for some time off, and this was a much needed break from our hectic schedules.

We stayed at a cute little motel call the Shamrock Inn.  It definitely wasn't fancy, but the price was right.  (It also had continental breakfast and a pool.  Done and done.)

The first day, we went on a "trail run".  It turns out our trail run was actually a really intense hike up the mountain side.  Definitely not something you can run.  We ran for about a mile, and then we finally gave up and walked.  In the end, the hike took us four hours (to go 4.5 miles...).  

The views were worth it though.  It was beautiful!

The mountains are mostly granite, so there were quite a few steep rock faces to climb near the top.

Definitely posing for the camera.  Look at that hip pop.

Like I said...not something you can run...

We climbed the peak in the picture below, and then climbed another one before the trail turned back down.  It was cool to look back and see the top of the peak that we were just on.

After the hike, we spent some nice relaxing time in the pool.  For Don, relaxing meant swimming laps.  I opted to actually not move.  

On day two, we went on another hike up to the top of a ski run at Loon Resort.  Because we hiked to the top, they let us ride the gondola down for free!

After our hike, we ate at an awesome brunch place called "Polly's Pancake Parlor".  I heard about it from one of my friends at work, and it did not disappoint.  I ate chocolate chip oatmeal pancakes and whole wheat blueberry pancakes.  YUM!

In the afternoon, we went kayaking at Echo Lake.  The lake was beautiful, and the water was amazingly clear.  Midway into kayaking, we docked our kayak and went swimming.  Luckily, neither of us actually read the rules before we went out on the lake.  When we returned our kayak, we saw multiple posters outlining the rules to not get out of the kayak, not leave the kayak unattended, and not go swimming in the lake.  Oops.  oops.  and...oops.

I'm sorry I didn't write too much in this post.  I don't have a lot of time, but I really wanted to get it up as quickly as possible to share!  We had a great weekend, and we would definitely go back.