Kearsarge Mountain

With summer drawing closer and closer to its inevitable end, I suddenly had the idea to try and do the "ultimate summer day," where I would do the things I enjoyed most this summer all in one day- hike, mountain bike, swim/throw the B, and eat a buffaque calzone while watching a movie. In a sense, I failed because of bad preparation- I went to the wrong trailhead and set us back a solid hour on the hike, spent too long on the mountain, and finished biking in the dark, leaving the swim to be in the dark as well. I also didn't plan it on a day that Rich or Josh would be around that night, killing any chance to get calzones and watch a movie. BUT, I still hiked, biked and swam in one epic day and we swam and got calzones the next day, so a "summer day (across 2 days (one of which was rainy and shitty))" video will be up soon. 

Originally I was planning on trying to hike 2 4,000 footers (the Osceolas) to reach my goal of getting 4 done this summer. My old work friend turned concert buddy Lambert had been sending me facebook messages, asking to go hiking, so I threw the idea out to him, and although he was worried, he was in. After him asking me a billion questions and it getting to the point of me asking him if he had ever actually been outside before, my common sense finally kicked in at 3 in the morning (when we had planned on meeting at 9, meaning I'd have had to leave at 7) and I remembered that my leg hurt me so much on my last hike that I could barely walk down the mountain, and maybe trying to do an 8 mile hike was a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, BAD idea. 

I decided to do a closer, more southern and easier hike, and went with Kearsarge, in Wilmot, NH. The Osceola loop would have been 4,000+ feet, like 8 miles and around 2200 feet in elevation change. This was a 3 mile loop to a 2,937 foot summit with around 1,000 feet in elevation change. This was a MUCH better idea, especially with me trying to mountain bike afterwards. 

There are two campgrounds to start from- Winslow State Park, where you hike up the whole mountain and I should have met Lambert, and Rollins State Park, where you drive up all but the last half mile and I definitely went instead. Here's to not bothering to get directions until I'm already driving there 20 minutes late!

Lambert was great though- I would have been PISSED if I had had to wait over an hour for my stupid ass to get there. He didn't seem to mind at all. He was ready with a trailmap, walking stick, excitement, and a WICKING METALLICA SOCCER JERSEY. Oh the fun I would make of him...

endlessly happy, wearing sauconys as hiking shoes

We walked up the steeper trail, which was only like 1.2 miles but definitely steeper than the other way (1.7 or something). We stopped frequently and talked too much. It had a few parts that were pretty serious, but there were a million roots and rocks to walk on, as this is an incredibly popular hike. I sweat and got tired just like anyone, but it was great to feel like a mountain that would have killed me earlier in the year wasn't a big deal. I had a few "oh wow, we're practically already there" moments when we got to the top. Those whopping 2 4,000 footers have made me used to only doing huge hikes.

roots galore

Lambert walking up to a false summit

and being blown away at the view

Lambert hadn't hiked since he was a little kid, so it was kind of fun to see someone so blown away by a view that I have already kind of taken for granted in even my limited hiking. Just seeing buildings and roads made this not feel as enormous or isolated as some of my recent hikes (and it wasn't), but it's still a damn fine view- it's easy to forget that when you hike bigger mountains.

This is when Lambert shrunk and stood on this small pile of rocks.

After a short while, we made the summit.

And it was niiiiiiice.

We talked to an 85 year old man who had taken the easy hike (can't blame him) from Rollins State Park. Needless to say, the fact that he was on top of a mountain at 85 was pretty inspirational. 

After walking around for a bit and taking in the views, we noticed the coolest thing about this summit- that there are words EVERYWHERE in the rock- like it's incredibly easy to carve into the rock and everyone who hiked it had written something. It obviously isn't easy to carve into rock though, so there was a lot of dedication beneath us. Lambert found one that had been carved in 1920 I think. It was neat.

The Ten Commandments

This summit, like Tecumseh, had a tower (which must be a cell phone tower), and like Blue Job in Rochester, had a building to climb up and get a better view.

It also had a sweet shack that I'm pretty sure I could live in quite comfortably. 

This would be Lambert's house:

We ate some granola bars on the top, and I realized I was running out of day, so we hit the trail for a really pretty descent. 

We talked about and listened to music the whole way down, and parted ways. Thanks for the company Lambert, I hope you had fun on your first hike since forever. Sorry for making you wait. 

Instagrammed clouds from the summit

This was a solid intermediate hike, and it was easy to see why it's hiked so often- the views weren't breathtaking, but for being pretty far south of the White Mountains and not being a very hard or long hike, they were pretty awesome. We could see seemingly forever even though it was cloudy, and according to some websites, you can even see all the way to Boston on a perfectly clear day. We couldn't quite figure out what we were looking at in any direction, but it was all pretty. This is definitely a nice beginner/intermediate hike, but be careful when you go- there may be a helicopter working on the summit... 8 years ago.

I then booked it to Franklin Falls for some get-in-as-much-as-you-can-before-it's-dark mountain biking. This was the first time I'd ridden solo here, and as darkness settled in, I found myself calling Kevin twice to A) find out how to get to the best trail, and B) find out how the hell to get out of there in the dark. Since he designed and worked on a bunch of the trails, he was just as helpful as I had assumed, and actually even more- he got me exactly where I needed to go with perfect detail. Thanks Kevin. Some footage will be included in the video, but the best part was this:

I see deer all the time on mountain bike trails, and have seen them run across the trail before as well, but this took the cake- about 300 feet into riding the first trail I hit there, I saw a deer standing in the middle of the trail, and it didn't move until I was very close to it. I got off the bike and stood probably 40 feet from 2 deer, who just stared at me. The fact that they weren't too scared actually convinced me that this would be the time I would get a deer to come to me, and I'd get it on tape. HA! As soon as they ran away a little bit though, one started walking towards me as I walked out of the woods. Then I went back in, and it ran away again. Odd creatures. I rode fast and violent though, and had a blast. I rode the best trail there twice, and although it was too dark to get any footage, Kevin plucked a not-fully-formed idea right out of my head and made a little movie about that trail just last weekend. Here it is:

Stolen from Kevin. He races too.

I then swam in the dark at a lake I didn't know about until I passed it on the way to Franklin Falls (Webster Lake), where you can apparently swim at all hours of the night (something we've been looking for all summer). It doesn't need to be said, but I'll say it anyway: It was incredibly creepy to walk into an unknown lake, completely alone in the dark. The beach was right next to the road, but still. I was surprised though- the sand was great, it was shallow pretty far out, and it was the absolute perfect temperature. I would have loved to have swam with friends or at least swam in the daylight or sunset, but still, this was a phenomenal way to follow up hiking and mountain biking, and a phenomenal way to accept summer's passing. Not a bad summer day- video will come soon.

currently listening to- We Are The Illusion- Podium of Lies

Halibut Point State Park, Rockport, MA

After my exploration, I made it to Halibut Point State Park pretty much perfectly to take a bunch of pictures with good sunlight, and then with the beginnings of a sunset. There's really not much to say other than that this place is gorgeous, and along with Lake Willoughby, I'd put it in the same category as a place you definitely need to visit if you live in New England.

I got a few pictures of all the best things here, and there are a lot, so prepare yourself for lots of pictures.

Pretty much right when you get there, if you head left towards the visitor's center, and then turn right, this is your view. You're looking at a rock quarry with the ocean behind it. Incredible.

a seagull is in the middle of the quarry

same shot, more clouds

I walked around the whole quarry to get some different viewpoints. I liked this one a lot:

Even the visitor's center is gorgeous:

the sky sure helps though

I then skipped "lookout point" and headed down a hill to the "beach." I put this in quotations, because there isn't really a beach- just a lot of rocks. In fact, so many, that people have built up a bunch of mini stonehenge sculptures that are really neat:

Some of which were pretty big:

oh weird, I'm wearing that shirt again

Directly in front of me was ocean and rock slabs. Apparently, very, very long ago, this area supplied pretty much all of the cape with stone for building. I'm not surprised.

But directly past those rocks, lush fields. Yes, lush.

This is the view looking up the rocks. I thought about ignoring the signs saying not to climb up the slope, but decided it would probably be a pretty good idea to stay off them, since there were enormous cracks and caverns I could easily fall into. 

The sky started to reveal itself as being a photographer's dream, as clouds started to separate and spread across the sky for miles. The sun setting only added to it. I took lots of pictures. These 3 are all looking at lookout point from the "beach."

This is from the top of lookout point, looking left across the rock cliffs:

that's a ship in the distance

And this is the ocean from the farthest left viewing spot on lookout point. This place is amazing.

After taking more pictures than I could ever need of pretty much the same few views, I finally decided I had to leave, but nabbed a few more pics of the quarry on the way out. 

This one is probably my favorite from the whole trip, taken with my iPhone:

I love the seagull in the middle. Thanks for making my picture even better, pal. 

I then began driving home and had to pull over twice because the sky was so beautiful. This is a little down the road:

And this was some beach in Gloucester. It's odd how much the sky had changed in just 20 minutes or so:

And this was when I finally got on the highway. I rushed to Ipswich (my destination for some Dairy Queen) to try to get to a good stopping point, so I didn't have to keep taking pictures while driving (I'm deadly behind the wheel if it looks like this while I'm driving), but it was dark by the time I got there. 

Halibut Point State Park is truly a beautiful spot, but the real gold of going there that day was that I got to make two strangers' days just a little bit better. I was taking pictures from lookout point, and I noticed some commotion behind me. Someone said something like "Are you serious?! Congratulations!" and I saw two groups of people talking, shaking hands, taking pictures, etc. I instantly knew that the couple that was extra happy had just got engaged. I had seen a lot of couples, and had just been thinking what a romantic spot this was. I guess someone else was thinking the same thing.

A year ago, I wouldn't have done this, but because I have this blog and am somehow becoming a much better, friendlier person, I decided to go ask if they wanted me to take their picture with a real camera, since I thought they just had their phones. I decided to see if I could take a picture of them together first though, and actually got a pretty amazing one, which I then straightened and added some contrast and blue-ness to:

This picture was taken a few minutes after Ann and Duane decided to spend the rest of their lives together, and I'm ecstatic that I somehow managed to get a silhouette of them embracing, with a sun ray magically finding its way to them. This was not a posed picture- I just snuck it. I went over and introduced myself (they must have been horrified- remember, I had just biked 15 miles, eaten beef, and explored the woods for an hour- I was filthy and my legs were COVERED in dirt and surprising amounts of blood). I congratulated them and offered to take their picture. Duane said that he actually just had some taken with his camera, and I said "oh, well... I already took one of you." They were pretty psyched about it, so I got Ann's e-mail address, made a folksy joke about how she was giving some random dude her contact information already (rimshot), and left them to their moment. I took another one on the way out too, which also ended up being pretty beautiful. 

I sent the pictures out a few days later, and just received a reply the other day, saying how happy they were to have the pictures, and that I had given them their first gift as an engaged couple. I am pretty happy about the whole thing, but the feeling I got right when I met them and showed a crying Ann the picture I had just taken of them in their moment, and seeing how happy she was- and knowing that I had just made one of the best moments of these people's lives just a little bit better was pretty remarkable. I was smiling the whole way out. What a feeling! Maybe I should become a wedding photographer or something, I don't know. All I know is that it was great to be able to do this for them, and I know that 100%, I would probably have never done any of this if it weren't for this blog. I wouldn't have been so outgoing, I probably wouldn't have taken the picture at all, and I probably wouldn't have been there taking pictures at all in the first place. I probably wouldn't have even cared- I would have been scowling at their happiness. But because of my new attitude, my desire to make stories and have blog content turning into something along the lines of "oh, well, I HAVE to go meet these people and send them a picture," life was better for all three of us.

It's weird how something as simple as pushing something bad out of your life and embracing the good can noticeably change someone to the point where I'm absolutely noticing it and hopefully friends are too, but I guess it's not really all that weird- it's not hard to be a happier, more positive, outgoing person who wants to help out strangers or "pay it forward" (as a friend joked I was doing) when I'm happy- maybe it's perfectly natural. If I'm happy, why not spread it around? It's great to continue having moments reinforce the idea that quitting my life and creating this blog was the best thing I could do at this point in my life. Maybe I'll win the lottery and continuing living a life more awesome will finally become the obvious path I always needed to take in my life.

currently listening to- Volumes- Self titled EP

Willowdale Epic and Random Adventuring

2 Saturdays ago, Kevin, Shaun, and the Bradleys (Ben, Adam out of retirement and even their Dad, Charlie, who is a thousand times in better shape then I'll ever be) met up in Ipswich to ride bikes at my favorite place, Willowdale. We were going to go to Rutland, VT, but Vermont had been so destroyed by Irene, we kept it local. Since these guys are early birds, we met at 11, and rode the hell out of the place.

We did a total of 15 miles, which was enough for me to be able to cross "do all of willowdale" off my summer list. Technically, I'd have to do 17, but we started on the wrong side and even though I was crazy enough to consider going back in the woods at the end of the trip to hit the 1 small section I missed, I couldn't actually figure out how to get to those sections without riding WAY more than I was willing to ride. And to keep things PG, the area on a person that takes the most stress when biking was hurting a lot.

We hit up the side I hadn't touched yet this year though, and it was just as fun and fantastic as I remembered. What an awesome place, and what a good ride with some good people who thankfully don't mind waiting for my slow ass to catch up and tell them where to go.

We even had a random dude ride with us for a few miles too- a guy who met us on the trail and needed help finding his way out. Luckily for him, I have the whole place memorized, even though I forgot about a 3 mile section when I first told him where to go.

Shaun and Kevin

It was more flooded than I'd ever seen it- this section was fine for people with 29 inch wheels. My 26 inch wheels and I weren't so lucky, and I spent the remaining 5 miles of riding and remaining 8 hours of the day with completely soaked shoes. 

Adam getting intense

I sat in the parking lot for probably 20 minutes, fighting with myself about going back in to ride the rest. I really wanted to say that I rode every trail I knew at Willowdale in 1 outing, and we had blown that ability by starting from the wrong side. I finally got back in the car, saying how stupid it would be to try and find the other trails, and decided to instead be very smart and head to get the best lunch I possibly could, at wonderful Nick's Roast Beef in Beverly. 

On the way there, I stopped to take a picture of a sweet eagle statue on the side of the road. 

If you don't know, Instagram is an application for the iPhone that's like facebook/twitter but just with pictures, where you can make everything look waaaay cooler and more pretty with filters. I am quite obsessed with it, and it has really made me appreciate a lot of the small things in life. If I didn't have a goal to post a picture a day and only post pretty or interesting things, I probably wouldn't have stopped and paid such attention to this awesome statue. But being obsessed, I turned my car around, drove back, parked at some church, and was THAT GUY who was standing on the side of the road, taking pictures of a statue. But the picture came out awesome, and I'm happy I stopped. 

I then decided to make the day even better by heading up to Halibut Point State Park, where sunset had spoiled any hope of me seeing on my trip up the coast a month before. It was a beautiful day, and I was in the area, so why not? I started to feel like heading there first, THEN going to Nick's, but my beef honing system made me get lost, and right when I realized I wasn't going at all in the right direction to the park, I looked up to see Nick's staring at me. My beefdar had purposefully made this happen. It was heaven. 

crazed

sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good

After destroying the beef, I headed up to Halibut Point, but quickly ran into a problem. Even though I had sweat out a large portion of it, combining the time before the ride, during the ride, and after, I had consumed about a gallon of water and a 20 ounce grape soda, and nature was calling, BAD. I decided to combine a panic pee break with my adventuring, blog-having attitude, and pulled over at the James A. Babson Museum in Essex. I have no idea what the purpose of this building is, other than it being very old. But there was a big field behind it that was pretty. 

Past that, there was a small trail which led to a railroad.

Across from that, was this post:

"The end comith 4 U 2012"

OK. Well, that's a bit creepy. Behind this, a subtle rock bridge over a stream led me to a trail in the woods.

there were actually several of these

I have no idea why this trail is here, and the fact that it has clearly been frequented made it even more of a mystery. Back on the main road, about a half mile down, there is a sign that says "End of Vernal Pool area," so I figured this may be some sort of tourist attraction, but when I finally looked up what Vernal Pools are (pretty much puddles that get big enough to last through the summer and breed frogs and other small amphibious animals), that couldn't have been it. Since the path that took me here was so random and hidden, it would blow me away if a bunch of people followed the path I did to just wander through the woods. I followed the trail for quite a ways, and never really saw anything interesting enough to warrant the trail, so I am still really confused. My best guess, after looking at a map, is that the trail is the outer part of Dogtown, a network of mountain bike trails I've heard about that appear to be in this area. But that still feels unlikely, since these were walking trails through an area too wet to want to bike through. 

It was really creepy and oddly nerve-wracking being out there in some mysterious nowhere. I kept smelling weird smells and kept feeling like I was right around the corner from something terrifying. Towards the end of me being there, I even started feeling odd- like light headed and randomly hot. I started wondering if I was just still somehow dehydrated or if something out there was making me sick. I didn't like it, and the more I was out there, I felt a mysterious need to get the hell out of there. I don't know what was going on, it was just a weird, weird place.

But this was some cool woods- to the right of me was thick woods and swampland. To the right was a hill with enormous boulders everywhere- in formations interesting enough that this whole area may just exist for explorers to wander around and look at the rocks. The whole time I was walking, the hill followed me, and rocks were everywhere.

this is bigger than it looks

I climbed to the top of one of the biggest ones, and it looked like further in was just more of the same- boulders and rocks everywhere. On top of one hill was trash and evidence of a fire, but it could have been years old by the looks of things- and could have been scattered by a bear or bigfoot or some sort of monster judging by how much the trash was spread around. It was a weird, weird place. I saw some weird things- like these rocks in particular.

The top one felt flimsy enough that a strong enough wind could easily knock this over, yet a hurricane had blasted through here a week earlier, and there it stood. This meant that either people had been here since the hurricane, or there were forces at work here. 

This tree was interesting:

And this subtly moving in the distance scared the crap out of me:

But for the most part, this was just a really neat, really interesting place that probably only freaked me out so much because I was there alone and I couldn't find a reason for this area to have a trail going through it. Maybe I stumbled upon some weird secret. The places life can take you when you stop to pee and you have the heart of an adventurer... 

currently listening to: A Nirvana concert on VH1