Family Fun In New Hampshire...

Six-Gun City and Fort Splash are one of the state’s Must Dos with kids: a combination Western theme- and water-park featuring go-karts, waterslides, laser tag, bumper boats, roller coasters and raft ride, but also pan for gems, catch an outlaw, and see the frontier show! Plus every September and October it turns into a ghost town for the Halloween Spooktacular!

New Hampshire actually boasts several excellent water parks, with the best of the rest including Water Country’s Pirate Lagoon, Liquid Planet, Kahuna Laguna, and the Whales’ Tale Waterpark offering 12 awesome slides, lazy river, wave pool, and wet playground. For those with their sights a little higher you can check out the dual sites of the Mount Washington Observatory at North Conwy Village where there’s also a weather discovery center, or by snowcat to the summit where there’s a museum on the peak’s unique alpine ecology.

Plus at the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center kids can get hands-on with interactive exhibits on astronomy, aviation, Earth, and space sciences, plus visit the observatory and planetarium. But it’s not all new-fangled: you can visit the 1740s at The Fort at Number 4 and have an unforgettable experience in an authentically reconstructed fortified village, or try dressing up at the 19^th century Shaker Village with educational activity center. Keeping the education but amping up the fun is the Mount Washington Valley Children’s Museum for under 9s, full of hands-on interactive exhibits which teach through stunning displays, play, and experimentation. The Granite State also boasts a quantity of family-friendly seasonal ski resorts with a good proportion of green runs and terrain parks or other features specifically suited to beginners.

One of our favorites is the McIntyre Ski Area, where they offer Parent-Tot lessons so you can learn together, these beginning at age 3; plus 6 of the 10 trails are green runs and they also have inflatable snow tubing available for kids over 5 years (and 44"), serviced by magic carpet conveyor lift. The ski season here generally runs from December through March and many resorts provide exciting summer activities like alpine toboggans and mountain biking between seasons.