Summer Outings

Some photos from late June and early July... 

This shot is Lydia getting ready for a 6-day AMC hiking trip starting in the White Mountains, starting at Pinkham Notch. The pack weighed in at around 25 pounds, but that was before adding in food and gear (final starting weight: 50 pounds). It seemed like a good group, 8 kids total and two instructors/leaders. They did get rained on a bit, but everyone seems to have survived.

Next up: fourth of July weekend in Tyringham with my dad and Joanie. Ethan and I arrived Friday night, but Amy had the unenviable chore of driving up to NH to collect our daughter. The drive up took around 4 hours and then the drive back down to Tyringham took around 5, so it was an automotive marathon for the two of them.

Weather was fantastic, it was really a treat to be outdoors enjoying it.

The field just south of the house was covered in lilies-- very beautiful. In and among all of the regular lilies was this weird pagoda thing. Joanie says that it comes up every year this way.

The field across the driveway is getting very overgrown now; the local guy who (very occasionally) mows it had a heart attack recently and has been getting way behind on everything. A big section of the field now has grown up with thistles, eek.

Saturday morning we tackled the job of weeding the blueberry patch and covering it with netting, a big hairy project. Everyone helped out.

Ethan stringing netting:

Selfie:

A shot of the solar panel, which seems to be doing fine:

Joanie putting the finishing touches on dinner: steelhead trout on a bed of soba noodles (a favorite):

Ethan is in there somewhere underneath all that hair:

It's long enough now that he does the pony tail thing:

Yours truly:

The next gardening was cutting dead limbs off a couple of apple trees. Not as easy as it sounds, I definitely got a good sweat (the kids boycotted this particular session). A shot of my Dad at work:

We did some mowing under the trees beforehand with my dad's mower, which is a pretty handy gadget. It weighs a ton, but it has a motor drive, so you don't have to exert a lot of energy pushing. It seems to be capable of chewing up just about anything short of large logs.

Turkey feather, found on a hike. Or to be more accurate, my dad pointed it out on the trail just before I was about to step on it (I hadn't noticed it at all):

This one I did notice, on my way back from one of my runs:

Lydia is part-way through the Lord of the Rings series; they had listened to the book on tape on the way down from NH, but she wanted to continue, so my dad dug out this copy (cool cover).  This book is almost as old as I am (1965).

More goofing off with selfies:

On Monday I was worried that Ethan would never get out of bed, but he did at last get up around 10:30, so we packed up canoe + kayak and headed up to Hudson's pond (now Steadman's pond, since the land was donated to the Berkshire Natural Resources Council) for a paddle.

Water was fabulous -- we took turns with the canoe and had some good swimming. Kids enjoyed it:

Not sure what the caption should be for this shot (?):

All in all it was a lovely weekend-- it was great to hike + swim and work in the garden, and be pampered by Joanie with wonderful meals (not to mention nice stuff from the garden).