Last weekend, just before the snow fell, we headed out to the “Green Frog” in Franconia, NH.  The parking area can be found at the intersection of Route 142 and Route 18.  We’ve seen the sign for a year now, and have been curious about what the Green Frog has to offer.

The trail heads straight into the woods toward the Gale River where you can get on the River Bend Trail.  We have walked and blogged about some of this trail north of us (from the Iron Furnace) so we turned south for our exploration.

The Gale River was beautiful and the 3 benches we passed along the way, confirmed that many people see the beauty in this little area too.  Across the Gale River we could see the trail in the Fox Forest, which was where we first noticed the River Bend Trail (We blogged about it: Fox Hill Fun and Fox Hill).

Even though we only planned on an hour or so, hot chocolate and a snack keeps everyone happy!

We found evidence of recent flooding of the Gale River from the October 30th storm, and noticed how the strong water even pushed a bridge over.

Andrew showing Alden how it looks like the water pushed the bridge over a few feet. You can see marks just to the left of the bridge indicating where the bridge used to sit.

Ice along the waters’ edge, clinging to rocks, and forming on small pools of water made for great fun.  We spent time exploring the rocky shore and marveled at the natural ice art.

Ice art. In the top right of this picture you can see a hiker across the river in Fox Forest with her dog.

We continued on our way winding along the river’s edge noting large white pines, hemlock, and red pine trees.  The large boulders and ledge outcrops in and along the river shore created scenes with the impression of a wild river high up in the mountains.  The trail ends at Route 18 so we turned around and headed back the same way we came.

The Green Frog parking was a quiet place to get close to the Gale River.  Although mostly frozen now, there seems to be a wetland near the parking, perhaps green frogs are abundant there?  We’ll have to visit in the summer to see if the namesake holds up.