We started the day in Gorham, NH, just across the border from Maine. It was really dark when we drove into town the night before, so I didn't have a very good sense of what the town looked like until I went out by myself to pick up breakfast the next morning. With the exclamation point of a brilliant blue sky, I noticed that the town was surrounded by majestic looking mountains and a stream. We couldn't have picked a better spot to stop on a night that we just needed a place to lay our heads.
Donna loved the quaintness of the family owned hotel and how much pride and painstaking detail that went into keeping the place looking so hospitable.
As great as Gorham was, it was time to move onto one of the biggest highlights of the trip for me. I've always been fascinated by extreme weather and would love an opportunity to go storm chasing in Oklahoma or experience a small scale hurricane. I must confess that I've actually spent a fair amount of time watching documentaries of extreme weather, and Mt Washington has been on my radar for a long time. At the summit it boasts of the strongest winds ever recorded by a human. In 1934, they recorded winds of 231 miles per hour. I'm not exactly sure what it is about the geography of this mountain peak, but it is apparently situated in a region of the country and is situated geographically in such a way that very strong winds are a common occurrence above the tree line. With an elevation of over 6,200 feet, it's a high altitude for a mountain east of the Mississippi, but not all that high otherwise. However, the weather at the top is probably the harshest of anywhere in the continental US.
In the wintertime, the winds gust strongly, so much so that people are sometimes just blown over and must crawl to get where they need to go. Those winds combined with the altitude and the frigid temperatures from a northern New Hampshire winter are a recipe for cataclysmic weather at the peak during the winter months. There is also a freezing mist from the clouds that coats everything with layers of ice.
In the summer, it is beautiful and chilly on a midsummer day but at least not as life threatening. We went on a tour of the weather observatory that is manned year round by people who record weather data every hour on the hour. We got to see where they live, and I must admit, it would be fascinating to work here.
We also noticed countless hikers who were making their way along the Appalachian Trail that goes right over the summit. Thankfully, we were able to drive to the top, but it was fairly nerve-wracking on a narrow two lane road without guard rails. it was a little cloudy at the top at times, but we managed to get some pictures at the summit as well as on the way up:
on the way up - over 4,000 feet
it's even pretty windy at 4,000
this is the road at one of its wider spots - looks like a shoulder here but no such luck for most of the way up
As the driver, I didn't really get to enjoy the scenery on the way up - tried to stay left of the center line whenever possible
parking area - at the top (almost) - clouds started passing us by
Kids touching one of the passing clouds
summit house built in the mid 1800s
You can see how this structure is actually chained to the ground
family selfie at the observation deck
behind the kids is the Appalachian Trail coming up from the south
After spending quite a bit of time at the top, we ventured down the mountain and headed on our way westward toward Vermont, then through Vermont and into Saratoga Springs, NY. The rest of northern New Hampshire and Vermont were sparsely populated on the routes we took and filled with rolling mountains. At Saratoga, our trip now begins to overlap with one we took to Lake George 7 years ago for all but Francey. Gigi doesn't remember much about that trip, so we thought we'd do Niagara again. On our way to Niagara Falls tomorrow.
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