Category — Non-NZ Adventures

This past father’s day weekend my mom and I participated in the Quechee Hot Air Balloon Festival. When my mom called me up a few weeks ago to see if I would go up in a hot air balloon with her (because my dad opted out), I decided that I had to do it. Not because it’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but more as a pre-emptive bucket list crossing off. It’s defiantly one of those things that I could see myself adding to my “do in my lifetime list.” Since it hadn’t occurred to me, I figured I could cross it off before I got that internal hunger later in life… and why not! I mean it was clearly on my mom’s list. Who’s to say I can’t inherit the desire to fly over the earth in a wicker basket tied to a giant blowtorch and balloon?

We took off, and cheering fair goers cheered. In a blink of an eye we were flying high over Quechee, VT and the famous gorge. Our pilot/captain/basket-master? was a short Richard Dreyfuss like guy. Apparently he drives all over the country with his balloon like a gypsy following balloon festival all summer long. Am I the only one who thinks that’s kind of odd? I guess he’s found a way to make a living doing what he loves, but who grows up thinking of that a viable option for a career and lifestyle? Apparently there is a whole sub culture of hot air balloon fanatics out there walking among us.

We flew over houses and roads. people came out of their homes and cars to look and wave at us. Dogs barked and cows mooed at the weird basket of people tied to a balloon floating in the wind overhead. There is something peculiar about looking down into back yards to see people looking up in wonder and waving. It’s like we just walked through their yards said hi and just walked away. [See all of the photos]

We landed with the aid of the flight crew in some guy’s back yard, as his wife stared in awe from the window as we floated in gently next to her flower patch. Random cars with families stopped and helped us pack up the balloon… and like that we were gone. Like we just played some practical joke on the world. I’m still not sure what the punchline was.

This past Saturday started out pretty early as Jesse and I drove out to the REI in Reading to stand in line for an hour before the store opened. We weren’t the only ones, apparently people had camped out that night. The line was already wrapping around the parking lot when we got there. I guess I should mention the circumstances as to why anyone would stand outside of an outdoor store (in the cold), on a Saturday morning. It was the spring garage sale, where REI sells used and returned equipment for half off the retail price. 10 o’clock hit, and people started running for the gear they wanted. It’s a sad sight to be honest. People were hoarding, pushing, and just acting American all around. Jesse got a nice wool shirt and I got some new hiking pants. Perfect for the brisk day ahead.

The two of us have been itching to get some hiking in once the ski resorts started to dwindle in fresh snow several weeks ago. We headed North right from REI for a day hike in the Whites. Mt. Hale was our last minute destination. Why not start the season off with a bang and check another 4,000 footer off the list?

When we got there, the logging road to the trail head was closed for the winter months (and for a few more weeks). This meant that we had to park at the main road and hike in with an extra 2.5 miles to tack on to each end of the hike. No matter. It was brisk but sunny and flat. It was 1pm but we had plenty of daylight to play with. I donned my new pants (which were missing a button) and Jesse grabbed his camera with a new wide angle lens he had yet to play with. [See the pictures in the gallery]

I quickly realized that my new pants weren’t working out. They were cutting off circulation to my legs. Yeah… that tight. Good thing I brought shorts with me just in case. As we ascended, it quickly became apparent that we were not prepared for the amount of snow that we were going to encounter. The snow got deeper and deeper. It was packed down pretty well, but one of us would let out the occasional yelp as our footholds would give way and we would step 1, then 2, then 3, and ultimately 4 feet down through loose snow. We were reluctant to continue once we saw that the foot prints in the snow that we had been following had donned snow shoes. We gave it a shot and second guessed ourselves until we reached the peak. There was little to no payoff waiting for us at the summit. No clearing and no view. Oh well. We headed back down with a few hours of sunlight to spare.

We got back to the car to find that Jesse had left the lights on. The battery was dead. Seeing as how we were in the middle of nowhere and in the off season, getting help was a bit difficult. We called AAA, but who knew when and if they would ever find us. We took to waving down passing cars. It turned into an interesting social experiment. It’s not that I was amazed at the amount of people who didn’t stop. (Those who did, didn’t have jumper cables.) It was the amount of people who didn’t stop and just slowed down to stare. At least pretend you don’t see us. There’s no selfish embarrassment courtesy these days. Needless to say, someone walked into the parking lot from a hike and helped us out. The day was topped off with an amazing meal at my favorite diner: The Tilt’n Diner.

This past weekend I made the long trek up to Lake Placid, NY in preparation for a 4 day (3 night) backpacking trip. There were four of us, two of which had never spent consecutive a nights in the woods before. We planned a 3 day trip that we could do without backtracking if the first day didn’t go well.

With our 25 lb backpacks filled with food, clothes, and equipment we started out from the Calkins Brook trail head.  The trail was a horse trail, so it was pretty flat and wide. We were able to cover about 11 miles the first day. Much more that I usually do, mainly because we figured we would be tired and want to take it easy the rest of the weekend. So we did a big chunk the first day in order take a big bite out of out total distance. It was cool to see how drastically the forest changes in the span of 11 miles. One minute it’s a mud bog, where each step is like walking in soup. The next thing you know, you look up and it’s all birch with blinding green leaves. This emerged as a trend throughout the trip, and never got old.
The wet sections were frog farms. It seemed as though every few feet the ground would jump away from under your boot. I hope we didn’t unknowingly squish any.

We got to our destination tired and sore from the day, with plenty of daylight left to enjoy. We stayed along Cold River that night in a well maintained lean-to. The first day had gone great! We had complete solitude. Not a human in sight since we left the car that morning. The night sky was clear and we sat out on rocks in the river for an immeasurable amount of time (part in due to none of us having any way to tell time) just star gazing. The night was becomingly cool and the swarms of bugs dissipated.

The next morning we took a short day hike leaving out packs at the lean-to in order to find Shattuck Clearing. We searched for it briefly the night before but found the river impassable on foot (as opposed to on horse I guess). This time we crossed a bridge a mile up river from where we tried the first time. There were trail markers for it, but we still couldn’t find it so we just gave up and headed out back on the trail to our next destination.

The trail was a section of the 100 mile Northville-Placid trail (which Noelle and I did some of a few years ago). We followed Cold River all day on the wet and rooty trail. It was painful in the morning. All of our hips were raw from the pack the day before. The soreness was negatively proportional to the weight that the packs lost as we ate our food throughout the trip.  We camped that night along the river. The bugs swarmed as soon as we stopped at our lean-to. The first order of business was to make a smokey fire and keep it going until we were ready for bed.

The next morning we awoke to rain. We waited it out in our sleeping bags under shelter. Once we set out, the black flys and mosquitoes descended. As soon as we would stop walking, we would get swarmed. We were barely able to stop for lunch. When we reached our intend destination for the night, we decided that trying to set up camp would be difficult with the onslaught of bloodsuckers. So… we trucked on. We did the next day’s hike with hardly a break. 13+ miles in a last ditch effort to get to the safety of my car. We made it bloodied, wet, and sore, just as the sun was setting. The second half of the day was not as fun as it should have been.

The next morning we woke up in Noelle’s family’s house in Lake Placid ready for a day hike to make up for the premature ending to out backpacking trip. We hiked a summit with no packs on. It felt good to cover some ground feeling while light as a feather. My ankle was bothering me from the previous day. The pressure from putting on a boot caused me to limp. I opted to wear a boot on my good foot and a croc on the bad one. The views were spectacular, and an almost perfect weekend came to a close (save for 6 hours of driving to get home to Boston).

You may be saying to yourself, well… that doesn’t sound like a “perfect weekend”. Lugging around heavy packs and getting eaten by bugs for three + days sounds horrible. The enjoyment part is something that I find difficulty putting in words. In fact, I hypothesize that this is something most people who enjoy this type of thing struggle to evangelize. The best I can do to express the fun and joy that overwhelms the misery is to show pictures. But this does not do it justice. Not even close. The only way to truly understand is to don a pack and just head out into the woods to experience the wonders of silence and nature.

Pictures can be seen in the Gallery