Everyday Explorations: Hiking Pawtuckaway State Park in New Hampshire

During our little vacation to coast Maine & New Hampshire we decided to bring our hiking stuff with the goal of hiking somewhere in New Hampshire (cross another state hiked off our list - even though the list if pretty small at this point). Adam picked a trail in Pawtuckaway State Park which was located about 25 minutes from where we were staying in Hampton. The weather was overcast, not chilly but definitely not the temperature you would expect when the previous week was 90+ degrees, foggy and it looked like it could start raining at any second, but we ventured out anyway!

Hiking in New Hampshire, terrain wise, is completely different from any other hikes we have done. The terrain was rocky but not like 'fallen rocks', more like you are hiking over boulders that have been there for centuries! The environment also varied a ton, one minute we were scaling the side of a mountain then the next we were in a 'valley' surrounded by grass and flat rocks, the next we were right alongside a pond and then we came around to find huge boulders! The boulders were awesome and we later learned that the area is very popular with rock climbers.

The hike should have taken us about 5 hours but we did it in a little under 4 hours. Why did we book it you may ask? Well because if you stopped, even for a second you would be eaten ALIVE by mosquitoes! They were SO bad! They chewed you up even when you were moving. They bit through my pants and when we finally made it back and I was able to count all my bites, I had 18 HUGE bites all over the front, back and sides of my legs.

All in all and despite the mosquitoes the hike was a lot of fun! We weren't able to get any pictures of the views due to the fog and you don't get a great sense of just how huge the boulders were from the pictures but the diversity of the trail made it a great hike!