Champney Falls & the Trails — a stop on the Kancamagus Highway.
On your left is the Champney Falls trailhead, and I want to be straight with you about it, because this one is NOT a Sabbaday-style stroll.
Champney Falls is a genuine hike: roughly a mile and a half in each way, climbing steadily, on rocky and root-laced trail, and you should budget two to three hours round trip. What you get for it is lovely — a tall, graceful cascade sliding down a rock face, with the smaller Pitcher Falls tucked in a side cleft nearby — and the same trail carries on much further and much harder to the summit of Chocorua, which is a serious full-day mountain with bare rock at the top. Please don't start up it at four in the afternoon in sneakers. Every year these mountains take somebody who set off casually.
The falls, honestly, are best in spring melt or after rain; in a dry August they can be a trickle down a blackened rock.
More generally — this is your reminder that the Kancamagus is a trailhead road. There are dozens of trails off it, from ten-minute leg-stretchers to two-day traverses, and several campgrounds strung along the Swift River. If you'd rather have a short one: Sabbaday Falls, back the way we came, is the easy prize. If you want a half-day with a genuine reward, Boulder Loop is the local favorite for cliff-top views. And whatever you choose, tell somebody where you're going — because in a minute I'll remind you again that there's no cell signal out here.