Otter Rocks & the Hancock Branch — a stop on the Kancamagus Highway.
Just along here on your right is the Otter Rocks day-use area, and it's one of the friendliest places on the whole road to pull in for ten minutes. There's a picnic spot and a short scramble down to the water, where the Hancock Branch slides over broad shelves of granite into shallow pools. In July and August you'll find families with their shoes off, kids turning over stones looking for crayfish and salamanders. It is exactly the kind of stop this highway was built for.
Notice the water itself — how astonishingly clear it is, and how it runs a faint tea-brown in the deeper pools. That color isn't dirt. It's tannin, leached out of spruce needles and fallen leaves up in the headwaters, the same chemistry that makes a cup of tea brown. And notice how COLD it is. These streams come off high ground that holds snow into May, and even in a hot August they'll take your breath.
One thing worth knowing if you get in: mountain rivers rise fast. A thunderstorm you can't even see, up in the notch behind you, can put a foot of water into this channel in twenty minutes. If the water starts to cloud up or you hear it change pitch, get out and get up the bank. That's not me being nervous — it's the single piece of advice every ranger in these mountains gives, and it's saved a lot of people. Enjoy the water, keep an eye on it, and let's roll on east.