The Best Place Ever (Georgiana Falls, Lincoln, NH)

I took a backpacking class as part of my phys ed requirements back in college. It was pretty awesome- people just took us on a different hike each week. One week, we were taken to Georgiana Falls in Lincoln, and my life forever changed. Pretty much everyone who knows me knows about this place, and knows that I refer to it as "the best place ever," because it is absolutely one of my favorite places I've ever been to.

The last time I went there was on "National Dirty Mike Day" as I nicknamed it. Last year, I decided to take 1 day and do 4 of my favorite things. I hiked here, biked at Gyroscope (a favorite place to mountain bike in Plymouth), ate my favorite food (a bbq chicken calzone from Ashland House of Pizza), and saw one of my favorite bands and certainly my favorite live band, Caspian. I did them all in 1 day, and drove 280 miles (Winchester, MA to Lincoln, NH back to Boston for Caspian), and it was glorious. I included a picture from it in the original video post announcing my new life. It was from the top of the best waterfall at the best place ever. 

It's kind of neat looking back on that day, since it was basically a sneak preview of my summer. Obviously, I took it a lot easier this summer, since I wasn't trying to cram everything into 1 day, but still- just the very idea of trying to do a bunch of my favorite things in 1 day just to do them and be happy- to name a day after myself and do whatever I wanted, etc. It was great, and I definitely think we should all do stuff like that more often. 

After Dan and I went to the Flume, we drove the few miles down the road to this glorious place and headed up. I really love this place (and may go again before winter is officially here). Here's a whole bunch of pictures, including some sweet HDRs taken with my iPhone. 

For those who don't know about this place, you basically walk down a very big trail/road towards the sound of a river, then follow the trail along the river, and finally end up (if you are like me) hiking up the river itself on all of the rocks. The goal is to spend as little time as possible on the actual trail, but it's pretty impossible at times to stay off it as some of the rocks aren't exactly hike-able. I usually go off trail a little after the "Calendar Tree," pictured below. I call it that, because the first time I saw it, it was perfectly covered in red leaves, and just seemed to glow in that "this should be in a calendar" way. Actually, here, I have a picture from that time:

Sadly, much like a metaphor for the lack of leaves changing and speed of fall before all the leaves were knocked off the trees by rain, the calendar tree has definitely lost some of its beauty (and limbs). I guess nothing is forever.

still nice though, especially in HDR

Here is why I love this place so much. You get to hike up this:

and then hike around several waterfalls, like this one: 

It can be tiring though. I think it's a mile to the top of the biggest waterfall, but it takes forever from having to chose paths through and eventually jump from rock to rock.

Primus Dan, dead.

Here's Dan, lost in the rocks, trying to find a path. I went far left (right in this picture) and found a nice path, but couldn't get back to him until about where I took this picture. He clearly was having some trouble.

Dan started a pit while I took an HDR:

I could have taken 100 pictures, but I already did that the last time I came here (friends on facebook: go find my album for National Dirty Mike Day if you want to see them all), and you can really only have so many pictures of the same place, even though I still take the same pictures every year. We decided part way up that we were only going to get to the top of the biggest waterfall, where the best view is. Here is that waterfall:

Dan, tired from the big climb through the woods and its wandering non-trail, staring at the pure awesomeness of the waterfall.

And here he is at the top.

I love this view so much. I think I skipped one year, but other than that, I've climbed up to this view every year for probably the last 7 or 8 years now. It's a tradition I plan to keep. 

And now, through the beauty of iphone technology, I was finally able to capture what I never could before- both the forefront of the waterfall and trees, and the background of 93 and the mountains far in the distance. Of course, I added some effect to it, but this is pretty much what it looks like, just with texture and lots of color:

Fantastic.

We headed back down through the woods, which is always a rough trip. There really isn't much of a set trail, and certainly nothing that's maintained, so you just wander around losing trails. But we got out, and the moon came out early.

And by the time we hit up AHOP (ashland house of pizza), the sky was gorgeous (especially with some photo editing).

We sat down by the river, in the area next to where Kevin used to live (and Squamtoberfest started) and took in some views. This has always been a great spot to get some foliage/water mirror shots, and even though it was dark, I was able to get some good ones, which again, got much better once I played with them a little. 

I forgot to take pictures of our calzones, but here is the one from last year's visit to the best place ever. AHOP is really consistent, so this is a pretty accurate representation. Except honestly, I think ours had even more cheese this year. So good. 

We then headed back to where the party had already started. Everyone had done different things that day (mountain biking, hiking, staying by the house and hanging out with kids), and it was great to reconvene, sit by the fire in 60 degree temperatures, have some pumpkin beers and, once I took over the music, blast some classic emo favorites (another staple of a successful Squamtoberfest). It was great- all too often our parties end up having techno and joke music playing. This is fine, as it's weird to play sad rock hits at parties, but I always thought it was kind of weird and also special that when this group got together, we'd often listen to much more serious and meaningful music, and I think if we don't do that anymore, we should at least embrace it on the time when meaningful emo songs we can all sing along to sound their best- fall. It was great to play some classics and some new ones that made people go "oh my god nobody talk during this song" (Naro during Bon Iver's "Holocene"). I had forgotten how perfect it felt to sit around a fire with some of my best friends and sing along to stuff like The Anniversary, Saves the Day, and The Get Up Kids. I love Squamtoberfest more than any other holiday. 

Mysterio freaking out on the fire

currently listening to- Into It. Over It.: Proper