Today’s weather forecast was for rain of varying strengths all day, at first we thought that they had got it wrong as it wasn’t raining when we went out to the car but this was quickly rectified and by the time we reached the Ranger Station at the start of the Kancamagus Scenic Byway the rain had started. This is said to be one of the most spectacular sections of the White Mountain train, it runs for 34.5 miles from Conway to Lincoln. It was named for an early Indian Chief of the Penacook Confederacy, Kancamagus who tried to keep the peace between his people and the settlers, with little success and in the 1690s the tribes scattered and Kancamagus and his followers moved on. We called into the Ranger station and a very helpful ranger gave us a leaflet with points of interest along the highway and suggested which ones were close to the road so we wouldn’t get too wet! The first stop was the Albany covered bridge, this seems to be the bridge on all the publicity we got out of the car and walked across the bridge, we should have been able to see Mt Chocorua which is 950 feet and we could have done a walk up it but as the cloud was quite low and it was raining we decided against it so got back in the car and carried on instead. The next stop was Lower Falls, these are quite low falls and not running as fast as we expected considering the amount of rain, but we had a great view of the river all the same. Not far from here was Rocky Gorge, this had spectacular colours and a cute bridge going over the gorge, again a little smaller than I think of when I think of a gorge but quite photogenic and the rain had eased off a bit so that made it better. Apparently in the 1890s this was a popular tourist spot, but the bridge wasn’t built so they crossed the gorge on a fallen tree! Again we could have done a walk to get better views of the gorge and seen a lake but we decided against this. We had originally planned to walk to a waterfall and have a picnic but as this is a four mile round trip we decided to continue for a while and try and find somewhere else for lunch. We stopped at the Russell-Colbath homestead which is the only original homestead left in the area. In the 1850s the area was relatively well populated with people working in farms, mills or lumber operations. At its peak there were seven one room schools and pictures of the area at the time show very little forest as it had all been cut for the timber mills. The Russell-Collbath house was built in 1831 as Thomas Russell purchased five 100 acre lots for a total of $5.24 and was lived in by his descendants until 1930. The last person to live there was Ruth Colgate who was deeded the land by her mother in 1887, she had married Thomas and they continued to live in the house working the land and looking after Ruth’s mother. One day in 1891 Thomas left the house saying he would be back “in a little while” and Mrs Colbath put a light in the window for him every night until she died on 15th November 1930, he finally returned in 1933 to find out that for 39 years his wife had been putting a light in the window, he said that he had no quarrel with his wife and he had remained in the area for the first year then just walked further and further away, after a time he was too ashamed to return to his wife and home, although he never said why he finally returned. The rain had eased again so we drove round to Sugar Hill Overlook where we had wonderful views of the Bear Mountain and Sugar hill and all the variety of colours. It was great sitting there having lunch looking out over the amazing views, then just as we decided to start moving again the rain started again! We didn’t stop at any of the other lookout points as we couldn’t actually see, also although we drove over the highest point on the pass at 2855ft we could only just see the marker board! The scenic road ends at Lincoln where we joined route 3 to continue our drive round the park. We pulled into the Loon ski area which has a Gondola and a couple of chair lifts but we decided not to go up in the rain so we drove onto Franconia Notch which should have had a couple of nice waterfalls but again because of the rain we didn’t bother stopping. We did call in at the Hugh L Gallen scenic outlook which is a bridge that I am sure used to link a park trail but is now only open to pedestrians, this gave amazing views of the foliage and should have provided a view of the surrounding mountains but again the cloud is a little low so we will have to come back to see it. We then went round to Breton Woods which has a magnificent view of the Mount Washington hotel. This was built between 1900 – 1902 and cost about $1.7 million – about $49,000,000 today! Joseph Stickney a coal broker who had made his fortune before the age of 30 had purchased the Mount Pleasant Hotel in 1881 he demolished this and began work on building the Mount Washington Hotel, he brought in 250 Italian artisans to built it and at the opening ceremony in 1902 said “Look at me, gentlemen… for I am the poor fool who built all this!” He died within the year at the age of 64. It closed in 1942 because of WWII, and was bought in 1944 by a syndicate who re-opened the hotel. That year the Bretton Woods monetary conference took place which established the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The hotel had to close to all other guests during this time so the owners were paid $300,000 for the loss of business and promised a daily room charge of $18 per person for the 19 days of the conference. This went a long way to covering the purchase price of $450,000. We stopped at Crawford Notch to look at a Waterfall, but will go back to this area tomorrow when the sun is out. Then we finished to drive by heading back over the Albany covered bridge then back to the hotel.
