Travels With Hannah: Leaf Peeping, Ice Cream and Family Chaos in the White Mountains

On a whim, I forced my family up early one late September morning to head to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. From where I live in Massachusetts, the upper reaches of the Granite State are at least a two-hour drive. Every year, I promise myself I’ll make it to the mountains during the peak of foliage season. And every year, due to some unforeseen soccer game or Halloween event or birthday party, I fail.

But this time, I was undeterred — both by the weather (unsettlingly warm for fall) and by the long drive (which we planned to do in a day, since the hotel I meant to book, but let fall by the wayside, was fully occupied by the time I looked for a room on Saturday morning).

Anyway, we hit the road after breakfast, tracking the progress of the leaves up Route 93. Mostly green through Massachusetts and well into the heart of New Hampshire, until, right around Franconia Notch, an explosion of yellow. Framing the famed Echo Lake, we hit the part of the drive where my kids finally stopped asking when we’d get there (not that they knew where there was) and started looking out the window.

“Look at the trees,” my youngest said. And, I thought, they had finally figured out the purpose of the trip — at long last.

OK, maybe not. There was some backseat commotion as they punched and fought their way through the remaining half hour, while I turned the music louder to drown out the noise. “The White Album,” the yellow leaves, the blue lake. It was fine, I told myself. Isn’t this what the notorious leaf peepers come all the way up here for?

Actually, they come to the mountains for other things too — like ice cream. Yes, you read that right. We came to Bethlehem, New Hampshire, to visit Super Secret Ice Cream, which opened in 2022 and was nominated for a James Beard Award earlier this year.

The female-owned, small-batch shop uses dairy from New Hampshire’s Hatchland Dairy Farm and sources fruit and other ingredients from nearby partners. I brought a cooler and took home six pints, including Honeycomb, Baa Baa Brambleberry, Mount Cabot Maple, Cantaloupe Sorbet, Plum Cardamom, and Honeyberry Chip.

From there, we went on to Rek-Lis Brewing for wings and a soft pretzel before driving up to the pinnacle of the Whites — Mount Washington. Known for its erratic weather, the mountain, the highest in the Northeast at just over 6,000 feet, can be hiked, skied, or driven up. (I’m not enough of a daredevil to ski the infamous Tuckerman’s Ravine — known among locals as Tuck’s — though I am enough of one to complain in the passenger seat as someone else drives me up the roadway.)

On this particular day, we had booked passage on the Mount Washington Cog Railway, the first mountain-climbing cog railway, open since 1868. The Cog, as it’s known, operates both a steam engine and a diesel train, with the steam engine currently running a route to a midway point on the mountain at 3 miles per hour. It’s due for a replacement engine that will allow it to climb all the way to the summit, like its sibling trains.

Through a cloud of coal smoke, we watched the bright yellow leaves as we climbed toward Waumbek Station. There, we disembarked for just shy of a half-hour stop and took photos of the Mount Washington Valley, all of it turning red, orange and yellow beneath us.

At the bottom, I did the most touristy of New England things — with zero regrets — popping into the gift shop and buying a package of maple sugar candies to be eaten on the car ride home.

On the way home, the kids didn’t fight — a surprise to all of us. Perhaps the mountain air had tired them out, too. Still, I vowed next time to book a room at the majestic Omni Mount Washington Resort, the 269-room hotel that opened in 1902 and has always reminded me — and I mean this in the best of ways — of the hotel from The Shining.

The good news, of course, is that the White Mountains are a place for all seasons. Soon, the snow will start falling, and the skiers — myself included — will start arriving to hit the nearby slopes: Attitash, Wildcat, Bretton Woods, and maybe those dreamt-of nights at the resort, walking the long hallways, looking out at the snow from a balcony room, cozying up by a fireplace, relishing the holiday season.

It’s nearly here. Like the leaves, I must remember to catch it before it’s gone.