North Conway Pros and Cons

Over winter break we took a family vacation to North Conway, New Hampshire and stayed at the Red Jacket Resort, a big family-friendly hotel with a water park inside it, and -- in case you are thinking about a similar trip -- let me offer you some pros and cons of North Conway . . . I'll give you the bad news first:

1) North Conway is really far away -- do NOT believe the Google Maps estimate of six hours and thirty-seven minutes . . . which is where I got directions, it is actually more like eight hours (with stops) and, oddly, Mapquest has a far more accurate assessment of the distance . . . so I learned something: those programs can offer VERY different estimates on how long it takes to get somewhere;

2) once you get to North Conway, which is nestled in the heart of the White Mountains, you would expect the traffic to all but disappear, but because of the narrow set of roads that leads through the valley the traffic is insane, all the time -- so every trip through town is like driving through downtown Manhattan during rush hour . . . which is fine if you're prepared for it, but when you are nestled in the heart of the White Mountains, this is always unexpected -- the number of cars shocked me every time we got on the road, and I don't fare well in traffic, even if I'm prepared for it (at one point, I had to get out of the car and walk alongside it while my wife drove, crawling along in the bumper-to-bumper snarl so that I didn't suffer a claustrophobic nervous breakdown);

3) Cranmore Mountain doesn't have many signs to indicate what trail you are on, so I spent an entire day zooming down a trail that I thought was a Blue Intermediate -- which is my speed on a snowboard these days -- and every time down, I thought to myself: this is awful steep and there sure are a lot of moguls and ungroomed stuff . . . but it wasn't until the next day that I realized the trail was actually a Black Diamond, and that I was in danger of severely hurting myself . . . and by this time, though I didn't realize it, I had the flu -- so I thought I was just sore from snowboarding on moguls, but I was actually delirious with a 103 fever, which made the eight-hour ride home especially awful:

but there are plenty of pros, so don't let the cons get you down:

1) the Red Jacket Mountain View Inn is a great place to stay with kids -- every hotel should have a giant indoor water park -- and my wife and I generated unbelievably dangerous speeds when we went tandem on the water slides, probably due to my incredible density . . . I really liked the fact that people were walking around the hotel either decked out in ski outfits or bathing suits -- it made for some surreal scenes;

2) the New Hampshire beer is excellent . . . I especially enjoyed the Tuckerman's I.P.A and Moat Mountain Iron Mike Pale Ale;

3) North Conway has loads of great restaurants -- the barbecue at Moat Mountain Smokehouse and Brewery was excellent, and Peach's has amazing breakfast and lunch food;

4) it snows a LOT up there, which is a pro both for snowboarding and for hanging out in the water park, which is especially scenic when it snows -- but that's a con for driving home with a 103 fever.