Mount Washington… I Think

We spent our long weekend in Intervale, NH.  Intervale is a little unincorporated township near Conway, NH.  Conway is in the shadow of Mount Washington.  Now I’ve been to the White Mountains of New Hampshire a number of times, but I am no good at picking out which mountain is which just by site.  Even with a map I sometimes have a hard time putting a name to what I am looking at.

Given that, there are a few hints as to the name of one of the mountains we kept seeing.  First, it’s freakin’ huge.  Mt Washington is the tallest point in New England.  Second, it had snow on the summit.  There has been very little snow in New England so far this year, but this one humongous peak had a noticeable amount.  The one time I went to the top of Mt Washington it was in early October, and there was a ton of snow at the peak.  Snow and thick clouds.  There was another clue in the first batch of cloudy pictures… We were in the parking lot of a building that offered Mt Washington tours.  Yeah, the first bunch of pics are Mt Washington.  It was drizzling at our (relatively) low altitude.  There were major clouds obscuring most, but not all, of the summit.

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For perspective…
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This morning as we were leaving the weather had cleared up completely.  There were little to no clouds, and the sun was bright and shining.  We came out of our road and took a right turn and BAM! there was the mountain looking like it was posing for a portrait.  We pulled over and camera nerd Robbie took a couple more pictures.

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River Behind Our Bed and Breakfast

When we first got to our bed and breakfast building on Thursday night we could hear a river running nearby.  Unfortunately it was pitch dark and we had no idea where it was.  It seemed louder when we were on the balcony out back than it did on the porch in front.  On Friday morning we looked off the back balcony and there it was.  I took a couple of pictures from there and posted one yesterday.  Here’s another…

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There was a road running right next to the river.  We tried using the GPS on our phones to find the name, but we had no cell signal and no wi-fi at all, so we were very much off the grid.  My wife is a software engineer.  I’m a programmer.  We both pretty much live on line.  To be shut off like that was a little disconcerting, but in the end it was a nice addition to our get away.

We thought the river might be the Swift river, which runs along part of the nearby Kancamagus highway (forgive me if I misspelled that), but we had no way of knowing.  This morning on our way home we took a guess at what road might be the one that runs alongside the river and we guessed right.  Well, Jen guessed right.  The chances of the river being the Swift were pretty slim as it was nearly dry at one point.  We did find the spot we had seen from the balcony, and I stopped and took a bunch of pictures.

Forgive me.  I just like taking pictures of rivers.

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Now that I am home I checked on Google Maps and it is not the Swift.  It is a short little stream that begins a mile or so ahead of this spot and ends a mile or so away when it dumps into the Saco river.  I can’t seem to find a name for this little guy anywhere, but it is part of Merriman State Forest.

Spiral Stairs of Doom

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There was one major downside to our bed and breakfast this weekend.

The Spiral Staircase of Death and Destruction and Doom!

Tight spiral, tight squeeze, tiny little stairs. Yeah, it made things rough on this particular big footed fat guy.

Oh, and did I mention I’ve been afraid of “triangle stairs” since I was a little kid?

Travel

I can measure the time it took us to drive from Jen’s company Christmas party to our bed and breakfast in Rush albums.

3+

With the iPod shuffling my Rush (studio records only) playlist by album, we heard:
Clockwork Angels
Permanent Waves
Grace Under Pressure
And the first track off of Snakes and Arrows. Three album and one song.

Time for sleep.

G’night.