Saco River Trip: Day 1

Since somewhere around the age of 10 up until a few years ago, my Dad and I have canoed down and camped on the Saco River every year. The last few years have been tough with him moving a bunch and me suddenly having much busier summers. We went 2 years ago in October, and even though that meant no swimming and freezing sleeping, it was still wonderful. We always went on weekdays or at least a Sunday night into Monday to avoid, as my Dad calls them, the "Yay-hoos." The Saco River has, for as long as I've known it, been a beacon to drunk frat boys- they flock to it like the river itself was made of Bud Light. It was always a weird place to have a nice father and son weekend, but we usually (save for the few times we had to go on a Saturday night or the time some drunks ended up on our sandbar at 2 in the morning, then continued down the river in the dark) avoid them. 

Last summer, I did the trip with a bunch of drunks and even camped on the worst sandbar on the whole river (we deemed it "Slut Island") for Jake's bachelor party. It was a fun weekend full of broken ribs, jumping off bridges nearly into boats, canoe tipping from strangers, late night sandbar party wandering, motorboats from strangers, and general good times. But it kind of sucked being in the heart of the beast- I saw what a beautiful river looks like when it is swarmed by the drunken scum of society. 

I've always wanted to do the trip with the group of friends I now live with, so I decided what better summer to do it, sent out some e-mails to gauge interest, and put the thing together. Of the 10 invited, 5 joined me, and we had a fantastic time. I figured that we would land somewhere between drunken frat boys and father and son relaxation, and I'd say that's a fair description of how we ended up.

It was in the low 60s when we started, and it looked like it would hit 35 that night, so when I walked into Saco Bound and said "we're the idiots that want to camp in this," it was pretty easy for them to figure out who we were. And other than the day group of kids and day group of drunks who set off at the same time as us, we really only saw one other big group. The water was FREEZING though (I think the Saco Bound guys said 54 degrees), and we started the trip off right, with Jesse dropping his bag in the water and watching it float away, followed by Al nearly falling down the absurdly steep stairs to the launching point. Really Saco Bound? You couldn't get a float, so it's always level with the river? You never thought of that?

worst put-in section ever

Rich and I partnered up and were not only the fat canoe, but were also the canoe with the guys who packed too much and had 2 coolers. We had about 6 inches of dry canoe, even after we stopped to re-adjust everything and learned that apparently on this trip, the whole river was made of quicksand. 

But we were off, and after some adjustments and mild freakouts that we were going to tip, we got used to the balance, and began our travels. 

Things were ugly right away though- apparently Jesse has never been in a canoe before, and he was in the back, where the experienced person should be. He and Josh zig-zagged all over the river, and hit us twice with enough speed to scare the shit out of us. Yelling ensued within like 20 minutes. All we were trying to say was- if you aren't entirely confident in what you're doing, SLOW DOWN- that way when you hit your friends, it's at a slow pace. Jesse's way of fixing everything was to go as fast as he possibly could. It probably didn't help that he was also sucking down nips of various booze (and playing nip roullete) as he was "figuring out how to canoe" either. I'm sure Josh loved this. 

Josh and Jesse, doing the whole river sideways

This was only the beginning of the yelling. Rich and I fought a lot too- he was pretty new at trying to steer in the back, and somehow, when he would paddle really hard on one side to try and go to the other, we would just go stronger to the side we didn't want to go on. I kept trying to tell him to take a rest and let the river fix us, or that I had noticed that if he paddled a bunch then stopped for a minute and I paddled like twice on my side, we'd straighten out. But it all came out as just fighting. Good times. 

It was beautiful though. Clouds dissolved and gave us some beautiful views of the surrounding mountains.

To quote what my Dad says to pretty much every stranger on the river: "Hell of a day to be on the river. Couldn't ask for much more."

Yes, that's a pound puppy on the front of my canoe. Since our first trip at age 10 or whatever I was, Poundy has always gone on the trip with me, and he works as our hood ornament. It's cute, I know- but I'll say this: I forgot him 1 year, and it poured the entire time and we had worse mosquitoes than I've ever seen in my life. I stayed in the tent for like 16 hours. We ate fluffernutters inside the tent for breakfast because we didn't want to go outside. So from there on out, I don't do the trip if Poundy doesn't come.

The river always has a lot of debris and fallen trees everywhere, and the fun thing is that it changes every year. This year, it was pretty evident that Irene had demolished the place- both from the amount of trees clumped up and the height of the water (definitely the highest I've seen it, even 2 weeks after the storm).

3 miles in, we had to take our canoes out of the river and carry them a football field past a dam. My dad and I always avoided this, but we couldn't remember the name of the place we worked through. I WILL be finding this out if we ever do this again, as taking the canoes out is a horrible, horrible experience. Rich did some climbing though. 

Our canoe was sooo heavy.

After a brief break to eat fluffernutters and chips, and watch some stupid kids stir up some poop stink mud, we were back on the river. I already hurt a lot. My butt was numb, and my upper thighs and hamstrings were numb and feeling strained. Not to mention my shoulders- ouch. I began to engineer us doing the smaller trip (our options were to do a 17 mile trip and get off the river at 1, or a 22 mile trip and get off at 3). When I asked the gung-ho-for-22 people how far they thought we had gone, and most of them said 5-6 miles, I had the happy moment of saying "yea. 3. 3 miles." And people started to see where I was coming from. We kept working at it though, and despite the pain and the random yelling outbursts, the fun continued. 

It was nice to see other groups yelling at each other and not be a part of it for once.

Even though we were going at a much faster pace than I'm used to (re: sitting and floating), the river was peaceful and beautiful like I wanted it to be. Finally, Rich and I begged everyone to slow down a little to let us catch up (being the heavy canoe really made quite a difference, AND we somehow always left sandbars last, putting us even further behind). We went through the whole Fiddlehead campground (where Slut Island is) at a relaxed pace. Matt knew of a sandbar he had camped at before that we would most likely get away with camping at for free, and he was determined to make it there, no matter how tired we were. Thank god this section of the river is much faster and the river's current helps out a lot, otherwise my arms would have fallen off entirely. 

The turn of the river my Dad and I always referred to as "The Current:" we camped here several years in a row before we realized how much better sand was at other places. It used to have the fastest current on the river, and we awoke one year to cows walking all over our sandbar (one of which looked like it was going to charge us), setting in play a tradition of us giving each other cows for christmas that continues to this day. The current had more water than I've ever seen before.

What a nice place. 

We finally reached the sandbar, and we all went into autopilot, unloading, setting up tents, seeking out more firewood, starting fires, etc. The mosquitoes that had just started showing up had apparently all ganged together with every mosquito in the town and headed to our sandbar. It was bad. We bathed in bug spray and Matt started a smoke fire to try and get rid of them. It all helped a decent amount, but we'd really have to wait for the cold to actually get rid of them. 

Matt cooking steak on a 2 dollar grill, which just ended up being in the fire because it didn't work.

Once my tent was all set up, I got to work cooking the Alexander world famous Saco River Spaghetti. My Dad started this tradition the first time we went, and he had apparently been cooking spaghetti on camping trips since he was a boy scout, since it really was just something kind of special- a nice alternative to the usual burgers and hot dogs. It's really just canned spaghetti though, with tons of added burger, american cheese, and the secret weapon, vidalia onion. Sounds simple, but it's easy to screw up (like I did last year by letting ASH fall into it), and there's a certain level of deliciousness you get from it that only people who eat it in the cold unforgiving wilderness can understand.

Josh is PSYCHED.

It tastes much better than it looks, I promise.

Josh was pretty psyched.

We then set off the last of Matt's fireworks, presumably left over from Yamstein. One was a fun sparkler thing, and one sounded like an atom bomb. We decided to not set off the others so we wouldn't get charged for camping by annoying the landowners. 

Everyone worked on the fire at times to keep it going. Jesse was my favorite though, as his idea was to just burn all of our trash at 11 at night, and start a sweet chemical fire of green flames.

Al, trying to set himself on fire

It started getting cold though, and too much food mixed with barely any sleep from the night before and an incredibly long day of paddling (and nips in Jesse's case) started taking its toll on people. 

Jesse, dead

Rich, for ONCE, not being asleep before everyone, catching Matt

I stayed awake longer than everyone though, and was very thankful that I had set my tent up far enough away that the different tones of snores were more of a distant buzzing than the chainsaw in my ear sounds of camping with Dad. It was cold when we went to bed (48) and apparently Al got up at like 4 in the morning and saw that it had hit 36. I woke up several times, but only really felt uncomfortably cold toward the morning, when my brain finally put together that I was half out of my sleeping bag. I'll make fun of people for falling asleep around the fire, but I was wearing lined wind pants, a hooded sweatshirt and longsleeve shirt and everyone but Al and I were still in shorts and barefoot. Bunch of crazies. 

We had heard the usual sounds of the Saco while sitting around the campfire- the random objects falling into the water that made our eyes pop out of our head, the distant howling of dogs or coyotes (certainly sounded like coyotes), and the random tiny woods noises that make you certain an ax murderer is standing behind you. But as soon as we all settled, the sandbar became the familiar chorus of snores and farts, and we all slept fairly well considering, and made it through the night to face another day.

Good first day, with a lot of miles covered.

currently listening to: Mae- (E)vening

Rochester Fair

Fall is coming on strong, and that means it's time for fairs. I said I'd go to 4 this year, and it looks like this will be definitely happening. This was my first time going to the Rochester Fair, and it was pretty much as described- a pretty bland fair that you go to just to get some food and stare at weirdos. Well, let's be honest though, that's really the only reason I go to any fair, and the true mark of a good fair is more variety of food and sheer spectacle of the whole thing- the Deerfield Fair is the best simply because it's the biggest. So the Rochester Fair was OK. I was highly disappointed with the number of Juggalos I saw though (only like 3, and only 1 with facepaint). Maybe we went too late and their parents already picked them up, I don't know.

Rich and I parked at Dan's house and walked in after helping Dan convince his poor 4 year old son that the fair wasn't actually happening- the lights and ferris wheel he saw were merely just the fair officials testing equipment (don't worry, they went later). We immediately ran into Reinert and his family, and Rich immediately tore into some french fries. I got some "freshly squeezed lemonade" from the closest stand I saw that was prepared by a certain crackhead and tasted like lemon water with sand in it. Lesson: Don't get food from the closest place- go to the one with a crowd and lots of flashing lights.

We then found Jesse and Sarah and wandered around, taking in the sights I usually skip, like the "Rochester Fair Museum," the tent surrounding it featuring kids' art, quilts, prize winning vegetables and all the other glorious things nobody seems to care about (for good reason). We even paid 1 dollar to see the world's smallest horse (a young pony that was the saddest horse I've ever seen), a giant tortoise (which was, to be fair, a large tortoise, but it just sat there, miserable), and something else that was so sad and unexciting I don't even remember it. Poor animals. 

We even played this stupid game (way too much) which I've never played. Sarah won a bunch of quarters, but I think she fed them all right back in. Suckers!

Rich shot some stuff and lost.

I rocked some skeeball and actually made good on my half-assed promise/guess that I was "wicked good at skeeball" and won this sweet Yo Gabba Gabba guy, who lived in my sweatshirt for the rest of the fair, and some kid asked me if he could buy it on the way out. Of course I said no- I earned him. 

I love the worker guy behind me. YEA THAT'S RIGHT BUDDY, I WON. 210 BITCHES.

It was so gross going through the game halls though, with unexcited and miserable people just zombie-screaming at us to play, looking like all they wanted was some meth. For some reason, the prize this year was giant bananas or Winnie the Poohs with dreadlocks... No idea how that happened, and I forgot to get a picture. Oh well, I'll get one at the next fair I go to, as I'm sure they'll be there too.

Jesse made friends with this donkey, and fed him some banana italian ice.

I really liked this cow- it had a sweet pattern I've never seen on a cow before. And he looked EVIL.

Not much in the food department though- Rich and I got some 6 dollar strawberry lemonades that were damn good, I got a piece of "fair pizza," that was just the level of crap I was looking for and a piece of fried dough that was ok. Rich got a sausage and onion sandwich that was subpar, kettle corn that was fantastic, and these, which were incredibly disappointing:

This is apparently what deep fried kool-aid looks like. I'll save you the curiosity buy- don't get them. We imagined fried dough wrapped around pockets of delicious kool-aid but had no idea how that would work. It's pretty much just dough drenched in kool-aid that's fried. And it tastes like burned, sort of fruity bread. Gross. 

The fair was pretty much what I expected, and I got just enough sights and food to look forward to the much better Deerfield Fair and Sandwich Fair in October. But even if all three suck, I'll go next year- it's just something you do in the fall. 

currently listening to: Thursday- No Devolucion

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