Last summer, my son and I headed up to New Hampshire for a few days as a late Father's Day present. I haven't spent too much time in New Hampshire even though I live in New England. For some reason, I have gravitated to Maine and Vermont. One of the things on my New Hampshire bucket list was to drive to the top of Mount Washington, which we had done the previous day. We had great weather and we decided to take an alternative way to the top via the Mount Washington Cog Railway.
Mount Washington is part of the Presidential Range, a subsection of the White Mountains. It is the highest peak in the Northeastern United States and the most prominent one east of the Mississippi River. It is notorious for its rapidly changing weather as well as wind speeds. The highest recorded wind speed on the mountaintop was 231 miles per hour back in the 1930's. Knowing this, when we bought the tickets for the railway after our drive, we figured that the next morning the weather might be quite different. As you can see, it was. Instead of a great sunny day, there was a heavy overcast as we neared the mountaintop. It still was a great experience. I took this photo on our descent from the top (the railway doesn't turn around, it just goes down backwards). As I looked at the tracks, I wondered about how hard it must have been to lay them back in the 1860's.