A year-round guide to 68 of the best hikes, walks, and family outings in New Hampshire.

This guide to over 100 waterfalls in the White Mountains of New Hampshire tells the best times of year and vantage points from which to view them, and also gives suggestions for further hikes, swimming holes, and uncrowded picnic spots.

New Hampshire's iconic 4,000-foot peaks, with their rugged character and natural beauty, have been attracting hikers, explorers, and outdoor enthusiasts to the White Mountains for more than 200 years. Though they are best known today for their long-standing popularity among peak-bagging hikers, these mountains played a major role in the development of the region from a daunting wilderness to a thriving recreational mecca. This transformation included the construction of the world-famous Mount Washington Cog Railway in 1869 and its various summit hotels atop the Northeast's highest peak, the cutting of hundreds of miles of recreational footpaths in the mountain valleys and on their steep slopes, and the creation of some of New England's first downhill ski trails on Mounts Moosilauke, Cannon, and Wildcat in the 1920s and 1930s. Over the years, the 4,000-footers have attracted visitors from all walks of life, including US presidents, renowned poets, world-class skiers, and Supreme Court justices.

Nature chose to endow New Hampshire with an infinite variety of lakes and ponds, almost inexhaustible in resources and unlimited in beauty. Each lake holds its own fishing secrets, curving nooks, jagged rocks, and intricate shoreline. For generations, the lakes and ponds have wielded their magnetic force, attracting thousands of residents and visitors in every season of the year. Lakes and Ponds of the Granite State invites you to explore the many wonders of these charmed places. You will see the sun glancing off the wind-flecked surface, hear the breeze rustle the shoreward-bending trees, feel the coolness of the water, and eye a prized trout or two. You will encounter not only those lakes that come to mind firstWinnipesaukee, Sunapee, Squam, and Newfoundbut nearly one hundred others, including Dublin and Spofford and the breathtaking Gloriette Lake.

Trout anglers, as a group, are deeply polarized. The author travels to the famed Driftless Area in the rural southwestern corner of Wisconsin to fish its spring creeks for brown trout and explore the science, culture and history of social divides. "Lost in the Driftless" looks at the role of regulations, the impacts of destination fisheries, the role of social science in fisheries management, and creek and wild trout restoration. The author's guide is a well-known, self-described Wisconsin "trout regulations protester." Author documents his fight to bring the "locals" back to trout fishing.