Saturday 17th September 2011

[07:27]

As our place faces East, I got up just before dawn to see the sun rise over the mountains - Mount Washington, in this case.

It was quite cold this morning outside - there was frost on the ground and the mist was rising from the forest.

We only have a short window for breakfast, 08:30-09:30, so we have to make sure we are up and ready. Our plans today are to travel over to the mountain road for Mount Washington and travel up to the top - warm clothes time!

[22:01]

The weather was crystal clear this morning as we set off. We drove over to Mount Washington, having to drive over to the far side of the mountain. The western edge, the closest to where we are staying, only supports the Cog Railway which is a small train that takes people up the side of the mountain. We wanted the auto road / tours which is on the far side of the mountain.

The board near the ticket booth said it was supposed to be 100 miles visibility.

This will mean it's possible to see the Atlantic Ocean from the top of the mountain.

The road up to the top of the mountain is a small not-quite-single track. You can drive up there with any vehicle as long as it's not over 8 feet wide. The bus we went up in is about the largest vehicle on the road. You could get two buses past each other without too much effort it seemed. We passed the tree line and kept rising higher. I was sitting up front, next to the driver, so I had a good view from there.

Once at the top, we had about 30 minutes to get some photos. One of the most unusual things was the way the top was covered with frozen fog moisture - it freezes into an unusual feather-like formation that covers everything. It also gets blown by the wind into weird shapes.

The view was amazing it was really as far as you can see. I'm not sure that I could see the Atlantic - but it was most likely there.

Once we came down, we decided to go a little further down the road to a nearby waterfall. It was a little bit of a trek down to the bottom of the waterfall, but worth it once we got there.

To end the day, we stopped off in North Conway which has a scenic railway that takes you out to Conway in a 55 minute round trip.

Luckily it was an original steam engine that was pulling the carriages.

Whoot whoo!