Pt. II - Mt. Washington -- the Auto Road!

Despite some warnings not to, we decided to tackle the auto road to the top of Mt. Washington ourselves rather than taking a tour or take the cog railroad.  They give you a cd at the entry to the auto road that you can play as  you drive up the mountain.  There is a reason they sell sweatshirts and bumper stickers that say "I drove to the top of Mt. Washington"!  Three quarters of the way up, we were engulfed in clouds and the road was gravel, narrow, curvy and very steep.  Cars coming in the opposite direction are driving in first gear.  The road is so narrow that there is an established right of way - can't remember now whether the people going up or coming down have the right of way.  

 The trees disappear and you are in a Alpine environment.  The final altitude is over 6000 feet and is the highest on the East Coast.  It also serves as the convergence of several weather systems according to the cd and the lowest temp recorded was here in 1934. 

 As we were in the middle of a cloud, there was no great view from the top for us.  You can see us heading into the cloud here and below we are actually going above the cloud.  So no view of the Atlantic Ocean which  you supposedly can see on a clear day (and these are very rare).

I should add that at the top of Mt Washington, the temp was 32 degrees and the wind was a steady 50 mph the day we were there.  We saw on the news the next day that the fog had frozen and there was rime at the top!!  There were some steps to get to the absolute top but there was no way we were going to attempt it in that cold and wind!!

We wanted to explore a little more of New Hampshire so we took the long way into Maine.  These pictures are of Crawford's Notch.  

We then headed from New Hampshire into Maine.  We stopped In Naples Maine on our way to Acadia National Park.