Tug and Pull, i.e. the Descent

 On the way down, the sun came out, and sweeping vistas dominated.  Our brakeman let us know that the locomotive taking our car down might have to do a little "tug and pull," to get us going, and said "get ready for the tug and pull," "you can't be standing up for the tug and pull" and I laughed a lot because I am a sad person with a juvenile sense of humor.  Tug and pull. Heh. The brakeman also continued to advise us to buy shit in the gift shop and eat some bad pizza, and also to buy the souvenir photo taken by the "cogarazzi" as our trip commenced.  Lizzie and I were both annoyed at the cogarazzi joke which we thought our brakeman had made up, but no, oh no, it is the real name of the overpriced photo company.  Lizzie and I both bought one. 

Mt. Washington Cog Railway Review:  A+ for gorgeous scenery.  A+ for trains, trains are fun. D- for capitalism.  C+ for puns.  A+ for the tug and pull.  Would ride again.

Mt. Washington Summit

WE MADE IT.  After a very challenging climb down three stairs, we made it to the summit, asked the guy manning the visitor's station a question, but he was super rude so being the intrepid explorers we are, we made our own way through the fog to the actual summit.  And dear lord.  There was a line to the actual summit, and it wasn't super long but there was this family of about 10 people who mistook the summit for an America's next top model photoshoot, and one woman was screaming instructions at the other people (OPEN UR EYES.  MOVE UR HIP UP ONE INCH AND TO THE LEFT) and ate up way too much time while the rest of us fought the urge to hurl them off the mountaintop in a sacrifice to whatever gods might be listening.  We were surrounded by misty clouds, and it was cold (who knew) and maybe the flip flops we were wearing were a mistake (a pre-teen lectured me about this for about 5 minutes as we climbed down the rocky slope.  THANKS MOM.  I GET IT.) but it was most excellent, and I'm so glad we didn't have to hike down.  Mt. Washington is on the Appalachian trail, and there's about 300 miles from Mt. Washington to the end of the trail, and we saw some pretty exhausted but excited hikers. 

XTREME WINDGUSTS

 This here is "Jacob's Ladder," where the trestle reaches it's steepest point.  Also, did you know that Mount Washington is subject to XTREME weather?  (FINALLY WEATHER FOR MY GENERATION).  (Actually, our brakeman told us he was XTREME and would like to ride the devil's shingle and we were like lol ok Eli you do you.)  Well because of the XTREME weather, (the highest windspeed not involved in a cycle was recorded here at 231 mph) the treeline ends about 5000 feet below where the treelines end on most mountains.  Weak-ass trees.

Mount Washington Cog Railway

Hi!  It's been a while!  So Lizzie and I had big plans to do a state trip to South Carolina and Georgia in early June, but all sorts of things went wrong, including delayed flights and mechanical issues on flights and rain and oh did I mention that my garbage boyfriend broke up with me via text message so when we finally did get there all I did was cry and watch bad TLC for two days (though I did get a tan, which is challenging for those of Irish descent--someone called me a "daywalker" which I think is a zombie reference?  Either way I'm in).  It was enjoyable for everyone and LIFE IS A RICH TAPESTRY.  In any case, Lizzie took me up to Mount Washington for my birthday, yay!  Neither of us had ever been to the summit (highest in the Northeastern US, 6288') so we went up the Cog Railway, which was built from 1866-1869 (or 'Colonial Times', according to our brakeman).

This cog railway, our brakeman told us, is the oldest in the US, and for a while, was the steepest at one point until the Swiss ruined it, like they ruin everything.  There's a coal driven train that goes up, but ours was bio-diesel, and therefore didn't have to stop midway up to waste thousands of gallons of water to make that steam business happen.  Yay!  Also, back in the day, workers at the top would ride slideboards they'd invented down the railway which they named "Devil's Shingles" which probably was an indication that it wasn't the best idea, as flying down a mountain at 62mph on a piece of wood maybe isn't super safe, and the slideboards were banned after an employee died in 1906.  Buzzkill.  Anyway, it's about a 45 minute slow ride up to the summit.

After one Desecrates, one Must Consecrate

 Before the dam was built to flood the valley and create the Wachusett reservoir, this stone church was built (1891) at the juncture of the Stillwater and Quinapoxet River, where they merged into the Nashua river.  Though homes, mills, and farms were lost to the purposeful flooding, the church still stands, and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.  It's one of the most photographed landmarks in the region, and for good reason, as if you look very closely to where Lizzie is pointing, the walls are filled with incredible, stirring art.

A Portent

This was lying on the ground at the mouth of the tunnel, and we went in anyway, headstrong fools that we are.

Haunted Ass Abandoned Train Tunnel

So mine and Lizzie's real goal in Clinton, MA was finding this abandoned train tunnel.  When the Nashua River was dammed off, the original train tracks were flooded, and so this tunnel was built in 1903 for the Central Mass Railroad.  At the time, it was the second biggest tunnel in the state, at a whopping .2 miles.  Just 50 years later, the tracks had been ripped up, and this tunnel abandoned by the state.


To find the tunnel, we first had to locate the remains of the trestle on Boylston street.  Once you found the trestle, you had to climb a small hill to where the tunnel's mouth sits, and at the top, you could see the headless trunks of rest of the trestle sunk into the reservoir on the other side of the street. 

We hadn't originally planned to walk its entirety, but when we could easily see the, well, light at the end of the tunnel, we decided to pass all the way through, though we knew the tunnel was supposedly haunted, and that a young girl had been found dead here 40 years ago.  After all, it was early afternoon, and we had hours of light left, and the tunnel was so short. 

Time seemed to slow down once we passed through the tunnel's wide mouth.  The cold granite around us dripped eerily, and the .2 miles stretched on, and on, and on.  Lizzie and I joked that at this point, we were more concerned with the living--if there were people hiding in the dark corners, behind the crumbling concrete.  We walked on, and on, and on, joking with each other until we finally hit the opposite end.  Time returned to its normal pace.  We laughed about how creeped out we'd been.

But we had to go back through to get out.  Had hours passed? We reentered the tunnel, following the non-existent tracks back (though somehow, they've appeared in this picture--the ground is rocky, full of crumbling stones, but there are no actual tracks), toward the eerie light, through the dripping ceiling, shivering as the ambient temperature dropped degree after degree.  When we got to the center of the tunnel, it was so cold that we could see our breath--it hadn't felt like that on the initial pass.  Noses running, hands freezing up like they do after a first, damp, snow, we stopped for a minute, feeling a strange thrumming in our chests, as if an actual train were passing by.  We heard the low rumbling,  thum-thum-thum-thum, and nervously mumbled about the magic of physics before picking up the pace.  Again, the compact tunnel somehow stretched on for miles in both directions--we'd look back at the exit behind us, to the exit in front of us, both light, and beckoning, and still felt trapped in a never-ending purgatory of freezing darkness, with the bass of a passing train vibrating around us. Our echoing footsteps seemed to be in vain, as the exit's light loomed in front of us, somehow staying the same distance away as we moved in what we thought was a forward direction.

But we made it out.  The feeling slowly returned to our fingers.  The tips of our noses warmed back up in the fall sunlight.  We joked about returning sometime at night, but neither of us are ready to board that ghost train quite yet...