Thursday - Rain, Fog and the Notch Train

Thursday morning we woke up to gray skies with a mixture of soft drizzle to hard rain all day long. This was the day that we changed our "Notch Train" tickets to. Boy, we could have picked a better one! Off we went in the morning for an hour drive to North Conway, NH to catch our train. The drive there was a mixture of fog and rain. We knew that it wasn't the best of days for the train ride, but you don't always have choices and this was our last chance for this ride.



The train station in N. Conway was a nice surprise. See picture above. Reminded me of a station you would see in a story book. Upon entering the station I noticed that there were a lot of families with kids, kids and more kids. Now don't misunderstand, I have nothing against kids, but, I still wasn't feeling my best and they were already getting on my nerves, just being around them in the station. I was having a really hard time thinking of being on a train for five hours with them. I'm sitting there praying for God to give me the strength to face the day when they announced over the PA system that they were loading for another train. Yippee - there go all the kids!

Our train came into the station about 5 minutes after the "kiddie" train left. We boarded and ended up being the only passengers in our car. It was like having a private rail car! How nice. One other couple ended coming to our car from the club car - they discovered that their seats there would have them riding backwards and they didn't want to do that. No problem, they were an older couple who just wanted to enjoy the train ride also.

I have to tell you now, because of the weather, it was not a good picture taking day. I did manage to get some, which you will see here. The windows in our car didn't open so most of the pictures that I took had shadows of me or the camera in them. This is the station at Crawfords Notch. You can tell how cloudy and rainy it was.



During the 90 minute ride to Crawford Notch there was a employee giving us a narrative of the history of the rail system, and the local areas that we passed. Very interesting. There was a 45 minute layover at Crawford Notch station before returning to N. Conway. There were more stories told on the way back. Since I still wasn't feeling up to par and had taken some medication, I cat napped off and on during the return trip. The slight sway of the rail car, along with the reclining seats helped me right along.....zzzzz

This is a picture of route 302 taken from the train. This is the route we drove to N. Conway that morning. As you can tell, the train route is much higher than the highway!



The first picture is Silver Cascade and the second picture is the Flume Cascade. These were taken from the highway. We could also see them from the train, but the pictures didn't turn out.



This is how the day looked....



Until we returned home in the early evening and this was the view of Mt. Washington...



The skies had cleared and the front had finally passed.

We now have to make a decision - head on over to Maine for a few short weeks or begin heading back toward Ohio, taking our time. Come back and see what our final decision is.