Mt. Washington Cog RR

We are parked at Roger's Campground, Lancaster, NH. It's a very large campground - over 200 sites, but it isn't even half full. It is a PA campground, but limited to one night only. I'll post a picture of our site later - haven't taken one yet. If the sky is clear you can see mountains in almost every direction. Unfortunately the sky isn't cooperating very well. Last night we had a rain storm pass over the mountains. Got several pictures of this double rainbow. It was so pretty and looked so close.



Today we drove to Mt. Washington, New Hampshire's highest mountain at I think around 6400 feet, give or take a few. We opted to take the Cog Railroad over the auto road up the mountain. We were told by a camper in Vermont, that we couldn't drive the truck up the road since it was a dully. We didn't check that out because we had already decided to take the train.

I will say that it was a once in a lifetime experience. Two reasons - first the cost. It was not cheap. Cost us $109.00 for a 2 1/2 hour train ride with 20 minutes at the summit. Second was the ride - rough! Small seats and little knee room. Very confining. Even with that, we enjoyed the ride, the views, the summit, and hearing the history of the train. I'll not go into all that, but I think that there is a good bit of information on their web page - www.thecog.com

I'm going to post a few of the 77 pictures that I took during the ride up and back.

This marker tells a little about the Cog Railroad...



Our train...



The start of the ride up the mountain - the smoke is from a train that left about 15 min. earlier.



Scenery going up the mountain...



Scenery is now changing as we approach the top. Can you see the hikers?



There is it - the top of the mountain...



Here we are. Guess next time I need to check Dean out for neatness! You can tell the wind was blowing - about 25 -30 mph. We were lucky, it was a mild wind day!


Looking back where we were...



They are going up - we are going down...



I forgot to mention - the engine was coal fired, thus all the smoke (and soot). Some of the pictures may look smoky. The wind was blowing the smoke over the passenger car - going and coming. We didn't get to much on us, but some people were really covered with soot.

On our way back to the campground we ate at Grandma's. Good food and priced fair. I had roast turkey (the real thing), mashed potato's, beets, cranberry sauce, stuffing and pie for dessert - gosh I'm full!

On Saturday we are taking another train ride, this one is a 5 hour ride through Crawford Notch. It is on a diesel powered train. We opted for the open air coach. As you can tell by now, we enjoy train rides. Someone else does the driving and we get to look. Till next time.....