One of the activities in my Explore the Granite State Challenge is to explore a town in New Hampshire you have never been too. This was a little difficult for me as my family and I have been to many places around the state. When I was looking at lists of the best small towns in New Hampshire, Exeter kept popping up. Even though I have driven through Exeter on Rt 101, but we have never stopped. Since we were driving home from Wentworth by the Sea, I thought this was a perfect time to explore the downtown area.
Exeter is known for two significant things. First is, it is New Hampshire’s Revolutionary War Capital. There is The American Independence Museum located on Water Street that explains its history.
Second it is home to the prestigious Philips Exeter Academy, one of the premier preparatory institutions in the world.
Our focus when visiting the town was exploring the downtown area. We easily found free parking right on Water Street. The first place that caught my eye was an outdoors store, Travel and Nature. They have an array of outdoor gear, clothes and much more. The problem with these type stores is we always leave with something.
As we walked down Water Street, which is considered the Downtown area, we saw a variety of stores from clothing, to a book store, a variety of restaurants and foods shops, gifts shops and so much more. Since it was a really cold day we stop for a hot drink at Dsquared Java. My daughter had a Carmel Latte, which she loved and I had a Chia Tea, which was delicious. They were perfect on a cold day.
We walked until we saw a side road that took us over Squamscott River. There were some people ice fishing on the river. We followed a path along the river that went up the backside of the stores of the downtown area.
We looped around and walked across a bridge over towards the public library. Where there was another small path along the river.
Despite it being a cold day, we really enjoyed the couple hours we spent wandering around the downtown area explore shops and the walking paths. After doing some research it looks like there are some trails around the Exeter area that would be fun to explore as well. If you are looking for a new town to explore, I highly recommend checking out Exeter.
