Sky's the Limit

Live Free or Die! What's more free than standing at the top of the world?

My little Xterra has crossed the country, driven Rt. 66, completed the Blue Ridge Parkway, taken us up and down the coast and on adventures all over. There was one prize I still had my eye on: Mt. Washington. You see the stickers everywhere so, naturally, I had to have one! After camping all night in Vermont and taking a refreshing dip in the creek, we headed off to New Hampshire to conquer the mountain. 

I like New Hampshire. They really take their motto seriously. Most Northeastern states are quite strict with their rules. Mandatory helmets on motorcycles, seat-belts in cars and don't even think about guns. New Hampshire, however, might as well be a Southern State; and that's a good thing. Live Free or Die! If you want to ride a motorcycle without a helmet, go for it. Over 18? You don't even need a seat belt in the car. And it is the only north eastern state that allows conceal carry permits from other states.

Following the GPS, we began to see lots and lots of mountains in the distance. We kept making guesses at which one it could be. Finally, one began to tower over the other mountains in the area. We didn't really think about how tall it was until we realized that we still had three hours to go to reach the base camp... 

Sorry, we were too excited to get climbing to take any pictures at the base, but this is what it looked like: /\. It was a little expensive to make the climb but they give you a CD to talk about the history of the mountain and the road along with the (in)famous bumper sticker.

The road was completed and opened to the public in 1861. As someone who drove it in a modern car, I say screw that. The CD told stories of people driving horse and buggy teams and Model T's up the mountain. Some people ran it. Some people biked it. One guy even ran up it backwards! I thought doing it in a manual transmission was hard enough! Especially when the car in front of you enjoys stopping in the middle of the narrow road on a 35% incline... But we finally made it to the top in about 20 some minutes. At the top, there is a research station and a few other buildings. One of the buildings is actually chained down because wind speed can reach over 200mph at the top! 

We also got some pretty sweet engagement pictures to add to our Engagement Tour 2018 album! Hard to beat that.

Manual transmission might be bad going up, but it was sweet coming down. We made the decent and headed off to the New Hampshire/Maine border to camp for the night.