THE COG RAILWAY
Riding the Cog up Mount Washington
For the last 5 or 6 years, my husband and I have gone off hiking for our anniversary. We’ve hiked in Wisconsin and Acadia National Park in Maine, but mostly we find ourselves in our favorite White Mountains in New Hampshire. We never meant for it to become a tradition, I mean we would have loved to go visit someplace tropical but we’ve always had hurricanes and bad weather around the time of our anniversary. Now, I look forward to our hikes together - even if they are cold and snowy.
So while last year we checked off a couple of 4,000 footers from our list, this year we had to be careful. No extreme hiking for me yet. Our first night there we took the Cog Railway up Mount Washington to catch the sunset without having to hike it. Because of the 90mph winds, we weren’t able to go all the way to the top (we were pretty close though). We stopped about three-quarters of the way up, stepped out to the platform and caught some beautiful views and pictures. It was breathtaking. The mountains had collected some snow a few nights ago and some of it was still there.
On the way down, the train in front of us had mechanical issues holding everyone up on the mountain. We were on the train for another hour or so while we waited for them to resolve the issue. Some people would have been irritated but when you have a view like this and can watch the sun go down over the mountains, can you really complain? Eventually everyone made it down and we saw the moon and stars come out. Despite the heavy winds and the train malfunction, which they gave us a partial refund for, it was still a beautiful evening well spent.
