Finishing the Loop #9 – Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont

Thursday 9^th May – Hartford CN

I had looked at routes for the next leg of the journey on Google maps when planning the itinerary, and every one that came up involved a toll somewhere through New York City. So, before we departed our motel in New Jersey, we checked with Carmen to see what she reckoned. By avoiding tolls, she calculated a trip of 707 miles, and by not doing so the trip was 114miles. It was mainly up the Interstate 95, and but we were unsure of where the toll was incurred, but we activated the EZ pass provided by Hertz. This brings about an automatic billing of the toll plus a $5.95 “administration charge – but better than an additional 600 or so miles of travel. It turns out the toll was for crossing the Washington bridge, over the Hudson River, which we did at snails pace. This was just as well as the number of off ramps we had to navigate around would have been nightmarish at 55mph. However, just as we got to a junction with a choice between ramps 31A (Queens) + 31B (Albany - North), Carmen lost her signal! So, knowing Queens was an area of New York City, I chose B as it seemed to be heading the right direction., Well it wasn’t and it took us to Interstate 83 instead. However, this turned out to be a scenic route, that was built to take traffic load off the main highway and ran parallel to the 95 anyway. Lots of pretty architecturally designed bridges (some of marble that we saw being chiselled off the roadside during road widening earthworks), and plenty of laybys with restrooms. Thus, we arrived too early at Hartford  to check in to our motel, so we went straight to visit Mark Twain’s  house. An interesting place, even though he didn’t live there all that long – he was away when his daughter died there and he couldn’t bring himself to move back in. It cost him $40,000 to build and he sold it for $28,000 It’d be worth a bit more now!). We weren't allowed to take photographs inside - it was very dark in there and I suppose they worry about the flashes doing damage? - so you just get pix of the outside:

On the way back to the motel and having not had lunch, we stopped for an early dinner at an Italian deli but when checked in to our motel, we found it was next door to a lobster & Prime Rib restaurant. The motel had obviously been recently renovated, made more obvious by the plastic, c/w price tags, still on the lampshades!

Friday 10^th May – Lincoln, NH

It was raining and 50F (10C), and getting colder as we headed further North. It was only a 2½  hour drive to Lincoln,  so we stopped at several shopping centres on the way so Carolyn could buy more shoes. We arrived Lincoln at  2pm, the rain had stopped but  the temperature had dropped to 46F (8C) and there was snow still on the ground from a storm last week. And this is at only 800ft above sea level, and not that far inland.

The motel had an indoor heated pool and spa bath in room our room, but we were both  too crook to partake. It is also the 1^st motel I can recall staying at in the USA with central heating as well as air conditioning.

Saturday 11^th May – Mt Washington NH

We awoke to a cloudy morning, but with some sun peeking through. However it was a bit windy and we had been told; “if you can feel wind in Lincoln, it will be howling on Mt Washington". We left at 9am for the 45 minute drive to the cog railway to catch the 11.30 train to the summit. This is the first cog railway built in the world and second steepest, with one section, Jacobs ladder, at 37.4% inclination and an average of 25% (ie 1ft rise to every 4ft distance). It used to be all steam locos but now they mainly use biodiesel powered engines as well as a couple of aging steam trains . The railway was built in 1869 by Sylvester Marsh (any relation, I wonder?) so this year is its 150^th anniversary and it is still largely as it was back then. The temperature was 43F (6C) at the Base station, elevation  2700ft, as we departed, but then…...

….we started to encounter Rime ice at 5000ft, as we as we reached the cloud line and the earlier train coming down.  

At the top it was COLD.   The temperature was 24.2F (-4.3C) with a wind chill of 2F (-16.7C), and the wind speed was 58mph.This is well below the highest wind gust ever recorded there oft 231mph, which is the highest wind gust ever recorded. There is a weather observatory at the top, with a museum and café attached Unfortunately both of these were closed as ours was the second train up this season -  the first being the 10.30am train we saw coming back down on our way up.

The steep gradient was a lot more obvious on the way down and you could really notice it with the brakeman standing alongside. There were some pretty spectacular views once we broke through the clouds, but pix were hard to get as the windows tended to fog up and you couldn’t stand because of the angle of descent

The original "little engine that could" cog train that was used to build the railway.
Named Peppersass because the boiler looked like a bottle of hot sauce with the same name

Once we reached the bottom, the temperature had risen and was a balmy 52F (11C) when we got back to Lincoln. It was recommended that we try a restaurant in a nearby town, Woodstock (no, not that Woodstock!), so we did and it met all the expectations we were promised. I had  a meal called “death by burger” which was a burger with an 18oz (500gm) pattie and all the trimmings. I didn’t have my camera so the pic following is one I lifted off the ‘net and happens to be the one used on their menu. I can assure you that this isn’t the sort of pic you see in a McDonalds advert – the burger actually looked just like the picture and was just as big. A group at the table watched it arrive with wide eyes and kept a close watch on my progress – so I felt obligated to finish it, and I did. No breakfast for me tomorrow!