T Stands for an Anniversary and Trains

 Hi everyone. It's T time again. This week for T over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog I'll share a couple of snippets about an adventure from this past weekend. Sunday was my husband's and my 35th wedding anniversary, and we celebrated a day early on Saturday. One thing we've both  wanted to do for a while now was to take the scenic train trip from North Conway (New Hampshire) up through Crawford Notch. This year, instead of just saying we should  go,  we remembered  to book seats before they sold out and off we went for a train ride.

We made our train trip reservations back at the end of July. Right now is our local peak foliage season, and that means this is a huge tourist time. Leaf peepers especially like the mountains where there are lots of trees. All the trains on Saturday were sold out, so I'm glad we reserved when we did. Even back in July when we booked our day trip, a lot of the seats were already taken.

Notches are  mountain passes or gaps. The name notch comes from cutting down trees, which early European settlers did to build their cabins. To cut down a tree you first make a notch, which, if you aren't familiar with chopping trees, is a V shape cut made into the tree in the direction you hope the tree will fall. Since these mountain passes reminded these people of those notches in trees, all our mountain passes here in New Hampshire go by that name. 

Yes I learned that on our train trip, but it was a question I had had for a long time.  😀

 Crawford Notch is  one of my favorite mountain spots here in my state, mainly because it seems so wild to me. That wildness reminds me of what New Hampshire probably was like back before modern times.

 Crawford Notch is  a state park, and also part of the White Mountain National forest. It's good these designations were put in place because back in the early 1900's when the status was changed, this area was practically logged bare. Making this area both part of a National Forest and a State Park this protected  the lands  in this area.  

There is one main road going through the notch. The beauty of the train is that the tracks are further up on the mountain sides, not down in the valley like the road is. You can see that you get a big notch view from the train.

Here's our train. It made one stop at the Crawford Notch station, which is on the north side of the actual notch. Back in the day there were train stations all along this route where travellers would get off and go to their summer hotels. This area attracted lots of people from New York City, Boston and other points south. People would come up to the mountains to escape the summer city heat.

One of the few remaining grand old hotels is the Mount Washington Hotel. It is now run by a big hotel conglomerate and is known as the Omni Mount Washington Hotel. However, at least they preserve the beauty of this historic building.

This hotel is also famous because in 1944, this is where the World Bank and International Monetary Fund was first established. Forty-four nations met here and set the gold standard. 

Just past the Mount Washington Hotel, the train switched its engine, and we headed back south. They also had us all switch sides of the train, so everyone could have the best scenic views. That meant our ride back didn't have quite the panoramic views, but that was OK. One thing about a train trip is that it is really relaxing. We spent most of the trip back talking with the couple (who we didn't know) that sat opposite of us instead of looking out the window.

And I need a drink to share for T this week. Here is one drink.

They didn't allow you to bring food or drink onto the train, which was OK. However, we didn't know they only took cash purchases. Since we were on the train for over 5 hours, we needed something, and neither of us had a lot of cash in our wallets. Between my husband and myself we scraped together $10. The woman in the food area was nice, so when  we told her we only had $10, she sold us a bag of cider donuts and 2 waters. I'm not sure it came to only $10, but it's what we ended up with.  The donuts at least  took the edge off since we didn't have any lunch. (And our breakfast had been quite early since we needed to drive north to catch the train. Plus this area is  always crowded with visitors, and we had to leave early to deal with the weekend traffic so we wouldn't arrive late.)

When the train returned back to North Conway it was just before 5 PM, and we were really hungry. It was way too crowded in town, and we figured we would have a long wait  for a table at any restaurant.   Since we also had  over an hour's drive home,  we skipped out of North Conway and headed south. We stopped in a town about halfway home called Ossipee where there's  a brewery we like.  At the brewery we had a burger and a beer.  

This is my second drink for T day. I was so hungry I ate everything except about 2 bites of the burger. But I brought that home so the dogs could each have a taste, since they had been waiting for us all day. It's definitely good to be my dogs since I do like to spoil them. 😏

And that was our romantic anniversary dinner. Cheers to 35 years and a very nice day out.

Have a great T day and week ahead. And of course, thanks for stopping by.