We are told to go across the street and to give the ticket he gave us, to the guide tour office for a "paid in full" trip, by Honda. You can see the van's lined up for guided tours in this picture. |
Joe and I were in the seat behind the driver. Joe was taking pictures because he was on the right side. |
The trees get shorter and shorter. It is eight miles up and we were at about the half way mark. The Auto Road was built in 1861, and celebrates it's 150th anniversary year this August. |
The trees become short bushes. |
Then there are no bushes, and it is straight down. |
Near the top it becomes very rocky. |
If you drive yourself up, you have to walk up the stairs from the parking lot to the summit. |
If you take a guided tour, you have to climb up some rocks and boulders to get to the summit at 6,288 feet. |
The winds are so strong here this building is chained down. |
The highest winds ever observed by man were recorded here at 231 miles per hour! |
This is the Cog Railroad loading up to go back down the mountain. The Cog Railroad trip takes around 3 hours for the round trip. |
This is the Mt. Washington State Park. Tip Top House. This 1853 Hotel was built before the Auto Road or the Cog Railroad. It has been restored to it's original state. |
The first room is the hotel registration room. Then you come into the dining room. |
These were the three sets of three level bunk beds, you got to sleep in. Horse drawn carriages took a long time to get to the top so many people wanted to stay the night. |
We had only thirty minutes to look around and get back to our guided tour. |
The views were breathtaking! |
It snows on the summit 12 months of the year. |
The temperature has never gone above 72 degree. It was 68 degrees on the day we were up there, which was considered a very nice day. |
The only downside to being on a guided tour, was you could not linger too long to enjoying the views. |
This trip to the top of Mt.Washington made the whole trip to the White Mountains worth it, even if we had done nothing else. |
I decided to ride up in the front with the driver on the way down to get better views. |
It was a bit more intimidating on the right side, but better views. |
Enjoy the ride down! |
There are three different life zones you go through, coming up and going down the mountain. |
At the top you have the Alpine Zone. |
Mt. Washington is the highest point in the Northeastern states, and the 2nd highest point on the east coast. The highest point in the east is Mount Mitchell at 6,684 in North Carolina. |
Then we came to the scariest part of the road. A very narrow dirt road. |
Mt. Washington Auto Road is Americans Oldest Man made Tourist Attraction. |
It's a beautiful drive when you don't have to drive or worry about your husband driving. |
We get to coniferous life zone. Trees again! |
Our driver said that the truck in front of us had been riding his brakes all the way down so far. |
Then we hit the Northern Hardwood Zone, where there are conifers and hardwood trees mixed. |
We could see where we were parked below. Almost all the way down. The guided tour takes an hour and a half. |
When we got back, we sat on the porch and had our lunch. It was mid afternoon, but you were not allowed to eat going up or going down in the van, so we had to wait until we got back down. |
View of Mt. Washington from the porch as we ate. |
To be continued: |
Wow- so cool you got a free ride, and on a good day! So happy you went there! Wasn't it awesome?
ReplyDeleteYes Dawn, the views are just amazing!
ReplyDelete