Lake Sunapee

Lake Sunapee sits in west-central New Hampshire's Dartmouth-Sunapee region, 4,100 acres of spring-fed water framed by the mountain sharing its name, worked by four towns in four registers. Sunapee Harbor is the cultural center — Main Street shops, a town gazebo, and a dock where the M/V Mount Sunapee II runs narrated tours built around the lake's three surviving lighthouses (Burkehaven, Loon Island, Herrick Cove), all dating to the steamboat circuit that ran the lake from the 1880s through the 1930s. Newbury, on the southern shore, holds Mount Sunapee State Park's beach and launch a few hundred yards from Mount Sunapee Resort itself — 66 ski trails each winter under Vail Resorts, a zip-line and mountain-biking park each summer. Georges Mills, the quieter northern bay, is where Goodhue Boat Company runs its rental fleet from a marina operating continuously since 1948. New London, inland and up the hill, is the college town — Colby-Sawyer anchors a Main Street with a grocery co-op, two pharmacies, and the region's only hospital, plus one of the oldest continuously running summer theaters in the country, staged in a converted barn. What separates Sunapee from most lakes in this registry is the calendar: the same mountain running an aerial challenge course in July runs night skiing in January, and a Newbury rental works for both trips without changing towns. Summer means harbor boat traffic and a wait at Wildwood Smokehouse's 22 seats; winter means the lake goes still and mostly frozen while the ski hill fills instead. Early October splits the difference, with The Fells' gardens open on weekends and a Clark Lookout view mostly uncontested.