February 10th 2013: Snowmobiling in the White Mountains, Lincoln, NH

Today, I had a meetup event to go snowmobiling in the White Mountains in the Franconia Notch State Park area. After dropping my friend off at the Boston Logan Airport, I had to rush a little to get to Sledventures Snowmobile Rentals. Thankfully, the roads were mostly cleared of the snow from Blizzard Nemo, so my travel was relatively uneventful. Along the way, I passed by two churches in Hudson NH

St. Kathryn Parish

and Concord NH.

St. John the Evangelist Church

I had brought all my gear as though I was going snowboarding, but apparently the place has all the equipment you need to be ready for snowmobiling, except for gloves. Thankfully, all my other friends arrived in time to go snowmobiling together. Once we had suited up, we headed outside for our tutorial about how to ride the snowmobile.

It actually is really easy, with my right thumb on the accelerator, the brake on the left like for a bicycle, although we were recommended never to use it unless really necessary. There is also a emergency stop button to use in emergencies to stop the motor immediately. The vehicle even has handlebar and thumb warmers on the accelerator buttons, so I decided to go without my gloves.

First we headed off to the other side of the road to practice snowmobiling for a bit, especially the turning part. It was here that I realized that it was actually quite hard to ride a snowmobile, especially when other snowmobiles have already been on there before, with deep ruts that made me feel like the vehicle was about to topple on its side, especially when turning in the relatively fresh snow from Nemo.

Finally, we headed off, and it took a while for me to get used to it and become more confident in speeding up to follow the leader, though not too close at at least 1 snowmobile's length behind, and with a speed limit of only 25 miles an hour.

We took two breaks along our path for resting and taking in the sights.

It was a blast, but it was all over too soon, a few hours later. From here, we headed next door at Fresolone's, a typical Italian takeout eatery for lunch. All of us got Steak and Cheese subs, with mushrooms on mine, which was actually pretty good.

With that, we called it a day, and I headed to Dracut to continue sightseeing there.