Took a relaxing non-Interstate drive thru the New Hampshire countryside to the Mt. Washington Cog Railway. Stopped at Franconia Notch State Park to get maps and more local information. While the colors are not at peak, we love the mix of reds, yellows and greens. The trees along to roadside were lovely to drive thru and it is difficult to capture the ever changing views.
Got to the Cog Railway in plenty of time for our 1 PM departure. They were running the historic steam locomotives but we were booked on one of the diesel trips. If you look to the right of the flagpole in the picture below, you can see a plume of smoke from the steam loco on its way up the mountain.
The photo below shows the train we ultimately took back down the mountain. they use a shuttle system with the diesel trips where you go up the mountain on one train that returns with the passengers from the prior trip. This allows you to spend an hour on top of Mt. Washington and return on the next train.
The ride up the mountain is very steep. The highest angle is 37+ degrees. They also use a very unique switch system.
We were very lucky to have good visibility from the top of Mt. Washington. According to the locals, it is pretty rare to be able to see very far. In fact while were on the top, weather came in and visibility dropped to Zero. The summit of Mt. Washington is 6228 feet and they had already had ice and snow! You can see the weather coming in the picture below
We also got a view of the Steam train before they left the summit.
We took a last picture of the Ammonoosuc River that is at the Base Station of the railway. This shows the fall colors very well. We finned the day with a very nice dinner at a recommended Greek restaurant. Great food.
We are going to hang around Lake Country today and take it a little easy.