America 2018: The World's Worst Weather!

No, fortunately, that's not what we're experiencing right now! But it IS the claim to fame for nearby Mount Washington (called Agiocochook by some native American tribes), in the Presidential range of the White Mountains National Park. It's the highest peak in the northeastern US, at 6,288 ft (Ben Nevis is 4,411) and notorious for its extremely erratic weather. In 1934, the Weather Observatory on the summit - the huge chains anchoring it to the ground show that winter here is no laughing matter - recorded a wind-speed of 231 mph, still a world record for measured wind-speeds not involved with a tropical cyclone. Up there on the summit, scientists continually track weather conditions, despite hurricane-force winds and Arctic temperatures, and with ice and snow year-round. There's an 8-mile road up to the Observatory on the summit, up which every June there's a road-race which a handful of runners have apparently completed in less than an hour (no, Matt, that's not a challenge for you - your successful Iron Man competition this year was more than sufficient!). For much of the rest of the year though, and upon payment of a fee (around $40 for a car and 2 people) you can drive up. This Sunday (14 Oct), the weather all around here was SO beautiful - crystal clear, bright sunshine and blue skies, albeit only around 3 degrees first thing, that we decided we'd go for it. Sadly, it was not to be: icy conditions from half-way up, and the first measurable snow of the year at the summit, meant that the road was closed to 'lay' drivers. Guided tours by Mt Washington staff in their mini-buses, still quaintly called 'stages' from the days when you would pay to be taken up in a stage-coach, were available, but the crowded schedule because of the hundreds of disappointed 'self-drivers' like us, made that an unacceptably long wait. We did, though, spend quite a lot of time enjoying the wonderfully exhilarating views from the 'base station' roughly one-third of the way to the summit. Fantastic!

Views To and From Mount Washington

Mount Washington Weather Observatory

Instead, we drove, via a stop at beautiful Ellis Falls, to Cathedral Ledge in Echo Lake State Park, for a great 'scenic overlook' at some huge granite sheer cliffs (New Hampshire is known as the Granite State), where we watched a number of serious climbers scaling up, or abseiling down, these heart-stoppingly terrifying but impressive edifices.

Views Leading to Ellis Falls and from Top of Cathedral Edge

In the evening, we decided to eat at yet another local Irish pub, The Shannon Door (geddit?) in the nearby community of Jackson, tempted in by the advertised live music by Kevin Dolan and Simon Crawford. These two regulars - not quite the authentic Irish musicians they were billed as - spent much of their performance, between and even during their songs, making up all sorts of nonsense about the customs of the 'auld country, including lots of weird references to haggis (Irish?), using the word flexibly as a noun, a verb, or an expletive and telling a tale about an Irish beer called 'Mountain Dew' (well, there IS actually a whiskey of that name) which a true Irishman would only drink in quarts - all of which blarney and nonsense seemed to enthral the local audience. But the between-song chats, as opposed to the singing, which had an Irish-American twang, gave away at least Simon's accent. As we left, part-way through the evening at a lull in the performance, we passed close by the two musicians, and as I leaned in to say thanks and goodbye, I simply asked Simon: "Ilford or Romford?". He looked momentarily taken aback, grinned, and said "Nah, Enfield". Okay, so I was only out by a few exits on the northern part of the M25!

The Shannon Door

Annoyingly (though we shouldn't grumble), along with the gorgeous weather on alternate days, we've had some pretty cold, wet and misty days too. Before we began our trip, our on-line research had elicited the fact that the average temperature here in October would be around 15-18 degrees. What we hadn't appreciated was that that 'average' might be derived from temperatures of a high of 27 one day, to a high of maybe 6 for the following few days! Anyway, on Saturday, we decided to visit the nearby town of North Conway, on the grounds that we could pop into and out of the stores (mainly outdoor-clothing outlets) whenever the rain or cold, of which there was both that day, got too much.

On the day after that beautiful day when we'd aborted our trip up Mt Washington, we also chose to travel to Canterbury, a two-hour drive south-west from Intervale, to visit the Shaker Village museum. We had hoped to travel to the Sabbathday United Believers in Christ's Second Coming (the Shakers' full title) in Maine, the only remaining 'living' Shaker community still in existence anywhere in the world (perhaps not so surprising, given that it's a celibate sect - although they have managed to survive since their founding in 1747!) However, the Sabbathday community, of only about a dozen people, closes its doors to visitors at the end of summer each year. The Canterbury Museum is a wonderful village of nearly 30 beautifully-preserved buildings, including communal dwellings, a meeting house, schoolroom, infirmary, and many workshops in which they toiled at their beautiful carpentry and woodwork, weaving and spinning, metalwork, architecture, furniture-making, and all kinds of other crafts. A relatively pleasant, and really educational, way to spend yet another miserably misty and wet day.