Route 101 offers hiking trailheads, antiquing, and dog-friendly dining.

By Robyn Larson McCarthy

Route 101 across New Hampshire is a major thoroughfare, country-style. Pick it up a little outside Keene in the southwestern corner of the state and it will take you all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. And in the Mount Monadnock Region around Peterborough and Dublin, the road is leisurely enough to allow for impromptu stops at the many hiking trailheads, sugarhouses, antique stores, and purveyors of ephemera you see along the way.

When exploring this beautiful area of New England with your four-legged companions this summer and fall, consider two of our favorite dog-friendly dining spots for a relaxing lunch break--both easily accessible from Route 101.

Countryhouse Corner Café (Dublin)

Online reviewers describe the family-owned Countryhouse Corner as "a great find" and gush about its coffee and iced espresso drinks and pastries. Yet we'd driven by many times before realizing that the establishment, which is housed in a charming old barn on Route 101, is a full café as well as a country store and gift shop.

Sitting in the comfortable garden the first time we lunched there, the atmosphere was so relaxed I almost felt I was eating in a friend's yard. A wagon with yet-to-be-planted flowers waited nearby, and customers chatted from table to table.

When the food arrived, the home-cooked aroma of the cheesy-eggy-vegetable dish of the day and a warm savory pastry tempted us to dig in--and really got Chaucer's nose