Photos from assorted visits with cousins, uncles, aunts, and grandparents. Ethan and Lydia got a chance to spend some time with their cousin Addie this June, which was nice. Tom figured out a way to finagle his work schedule so as to touch down in Tyringham for a couple of days, after which Addie headed off to music camp. I drove Lydia out on a Thursday night so that she could spend Friday and Sat with her cousin. I had to work on Friday, but I drove out again to spend Saturday with the gang. It was great to hang out with Tom and Addie -- don't get to see them very often.
The kids spent time working on a fairly elaborate tree-house-like contraption in the big apple tree just north of the pool:
It's hard to take good photos of Ethan these days, since half the time I point the camera in his direction he's having fun mugging for the shot:
The pool was in very nice shape; everyone enjoyed their swims.
There were numerous card games: hearts, "Oh Hell", and others:
On Sat night we had a marathon "charades" game, which was a lot of fun. The teams were Tom, Addie, Lydia, and Carey on one side, and Bob, Ethan, Sue, Joanie, and myself on the other side... or at least something like that (can't quite remember the setup). Here is Tom trying to act out "The Hunger Games" for Lydia and Addie (second word first syllable I believe :-). It took Addie and Lydia quite some time to figure it out, in spite of the fact that both of them have read the book:
More charades photos:
I had fun acting out "Oedipus" and "The Oxford English Dictionary". I also made a determined effort to set a speed record for the clue "Justin Bieber" (the key is the hair flip, of course). Here is Lydia acting out something tricky for her teammates:
.. and of course there were many opportunities to lie around reading various books. Among the popular selections: my dad's big book of jokes (which includes an entire chapter on "Blonde" jokes), the latest "Zits" book, and "Big Nate":
Climbing rose bush by the pool is particularly nice this time of year:
.. and of course there was chamber music:
Next up in the various visits: a trip to Tinmouth for the July 4th holiday. Lydia and I drove up on Thursday so that we would have a little extra time; Amy and Ethan joined us Friday night.
Lunch Thursday at Rustin's cabin:
Friday night we had dinner at the Red Clover Inn near Killington. Very tasty; we'll have to go back again.
My mom at work in her garden, which is in amazing shape considering all the rain we've had this spring and summer. It looks as though it should be featured in a gardening magazine:
Lots of blueberries, but none ripe just yet:
My mom arranged an archery target setup for Lydia; here she is trying it out:
On Saturday: Kate, Janet, and Ken arrived to pay us a visit; we headed off to Lake St Catherine for a picnic and canoe-kayak expedition. It was actually kind of tricky to get photos of the kids-- it seemed as though every time I pointed the camera in their direction, they were taking off on a new game or adventure of some sort (or they were underwater).
More photos. Lots of wonderful meals courtesy of my mom (with help also from Lydia in the cooking dept):
Wow, what a cake!
We were all a bit exhausted after Sat (lots of time out in the sun and on the water).
On Sunday morning we had a nice brunch and I went for a run in the morning. Got rained on, but only lightly.
This past week Ethan and I went on a hiking trip together to the White Mountains in NH; I thought I would write a short blog post on it and put up some photos. Ethan's school year finishes up so much earlier than Lydia's that it has left him with a lot of slack time in June, so I decided that I would take some time off from work to go hiking with him. We left Wed Jun 12th in the morning-- nice weather in Lexington, but with somewhat scary forecasts about upcoming rainstorms, etc. The traditional pre-hike regular photograph:
...and the traditional pre-hike sumo wrestling pose:
The backpack I am wearing is new (gift from my dad), as are Ethan's hiking boots (gift from his mom). E's boots are now size 13, eek. We weighed our backpacks before the trip-- mine came in around 23-25 pounds, and Ethan's was around 15. Those numbers seem pretty comfy to me; with no tent, no stove, no sleeping bag you can have a nice light load.
After getting our stuff into the car, we drive up to 3 to 93 up through Franconia Notch and round to Crawford Depot. On the older AMC maps this spot doesn't really have anything (it's just a place where the train stopped) but it now has a big building called "Highland Center" which seems sort of like a medium-sized hotel. We parked the car in one of the lots off the side and hit the trail around 1:15. Very rainy; we started getting wet right away and continued to get soaked pretty much the whole way.
Midway through the hike. This sort of gives you an idea of the conditions...
The trail itself was very wet, too-- there were quite a few sections where it felt as though we were hiking through a swamp that had a few rocks sticking out of it. Ethan is now a very speedy hiker, so I spent the whole of the hike trying to keep up with him.
We reached our destination (Zealand Falls Hut) a bit after four; it was about a five (ish) mile hike. The hut is perched a couple of hundred yards up from a small lake, and next to a river flowing down a rocky outcrop. When we got there the river was an absolute torrent, very fast and quite muddy (much fuller than usual because of the rain).
The crowd at the hut was the usual mix of young and old, although this time around they had a big group of middle schoolers (6th grader) from one of the local NH schools, so it was weighted a little more heavily towards the young. The AMC now has a program called "Moutain Classroom" (or something similar) that caters to school groups: given a dozen or so kids, and maybe a couple of school chaperones, the AMC provides a mountain guide, a program, and a stay in the huts.
As always with the huts we had an excellent dinner: Challah bread, soup, salad, "pulled" pork, rice, and corn. Afterwards we played some cards, then Ethan managed to get himself invited into a "hearts" game with some of the hut crew. I wrote in my journal and did some reading in my book ("Cloud Atlas" by Liam Callahan, which is turning out to be good).
The bunkroom at Zealand was really nice-- they had redone things to add little LED lights for each bunk, and the layout was very convenient. Better yet, the middle schoolers were all on the other side of the hut, so Ethan and I actually got quite a decent night's sleep in spite of the usual snoring and noises of people clambering in and out the bunks.
Jun 13: despite the less-than-perfect weather forecast, Thursday actually turned out to be quite a nice day: sunny, not too warm, nice and clear. I got up around 5:50 and put a bunch of our wet stuff outside to dry before breakfast.
After breakfast we got packed up and headed out. The trail (Twinway) goes up very steeply, crosses the river (which thankfully had a little less water in it this time), and then tops out at a superb overlook with views to the south and to the west of Mt Washington. Photo from the overlook:
... and here is a video from the same spot (the big mountain in the far left of the scene is actually Mt Washington):
We hiked along with a family from Cleveland that was also headed our way: mom + dad + three kids, the oldest just a little younger than Ethan. It was good to have some company on the trail. After the big climb up to the overlook, the trail mostly followed the ridge, but there were still a lot of ups and downs. The weather was good, not too cold or too warm, although there was a period where it seemed as though I was cold on the downhill sections and sweating like crazy on the uphills. We had lunch on South Twin Mountain (nice views), then made a big descent to get to the hut.
This is a photo of the trail-- gives you an idea as to just how little topsoil there is up on the ridge of the mountains-- it's basically a couple of inches of dirt, then bare rock.
Ethan at our mid-morning snack spot, near Mt Guyot.
I had a close encounter on the trail with a speckled grouse-- it let me get very close with my camera, so I am guessing that I'm not the first human it had run into. Interesting looking bird.
Lunch on South Twin mountain:
In spite of the distance involved (7+ miles) we arrived quite early at Galehead Hut, around 2:15 or so. In the afternoon we had a marathon card game session, featuring the "math game" (you are dealt 5 cards and you have to come up with a series of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division operations using your cards to arrive at a specific value), then "Oh Hell" (Ethan and I explained the rules), then "Hearts", and then a bunch of other weird games, including "E.R.S" (Egyptian Rat Slapping, which I had never heard of), "B.S." and so on. As usual the adults were exhausted long before the kids.
We had another nice dinner, then the kids had a big game of frisbee outdoors, then a complicated game of tag. There was another gang of school kids at Galehead, this one 7th and 8th grade boys. They were a good deal more noisy and rowdy than the last group, meaning that it took them a while to get settled down and stop making a racket around bedtime. The bunkroom was also a bit damp, so it wasn't quite as pleasant as the Zealand Falls experience. Still, it beats having to pitch a tent in the rain, and/or having to haul the thing around.
Another scary weather forecast that evening; (rain predicted for Friday), so a lot of the folks who were planning on making the next leg of the journey to the Greenleaf Hut were biting their nails.
Jul 14: we woke up not to showers but to nice weather after all-- big relief for everyone. After a solid breakfast, Ethan and I had a strategy session and decided that we would try to extend our hike a bit. The original plan had called for heading directly from the hut down the "Gale River" trail to the parking lot, then hopping on the 2:20 shuttle back to Highland Center. The Gale River segment was listed as about five miles on the map, which meant that if we left after breakfast we would wind up spending a lot of time sitting around in the parking lot. Instead we decided to do a side trip along the Garfield Ridge trail (also the trail to Greenleaf), up to the top of Mt Garfield, then down the Garfield trail and to a different trailhead, then connect up by hiking along one of the back roads for a couple of miles. Much more interesting hike, but also more distance (a bit over eleven miles). With the nice weather, though, it turned out wonderfully-- we got to hike alongside our friends from Cleveland (they were also headed to Mt Garfield) and we had wonderful views from the top. Alas, no pictures for the last day-- my camera battery had completely died at that point-- not sure what happened there.
We finished our loop by around 1:45 or so, then hung out for a while at the shuttle bus stop talking with a couple from Reno. They were interesting people -- both geologists in the gold mining industry. Hadn't been aware of this, but apparently gold mining is a big business in Nevada-- that state alone is the third biggest gold producer in the world. We also caught a glimpse of a black bear ambling along the road that we were on (maybe 100 yds off). He did't seem interested in getting any closer to us that than, which I suppose is good.
Ethan and I dozed on the shuttle bus back to Highland Center, then had an easy drive back to MA. We had fun listening to the Dan Brown book-on-tape that Paul and Frances gave me for my birthday; the stuff he writes is fairly cliche' at various points but it's still very entertaining.
It was a very nice trip -- Ethan is a good hiking companion, and we covered a lot of ground and saw some beautiful views. Also gave me plenty of opportunity to start thinking about where to hike next...
