Labor Day Weekend Camping Trip

I went camping this past Labor Day weekend and bagged three more of the official 48 four-thousand footers in NH, increasing my current total to seven (I did Mt. Hancock and Mt. Osceola almost exactly two years ago on Labor Day weekend of 2007). I hadn't planned the trails I would hike and it wasn't until I started reading the trail book that I decided to start tackling the official list of 48. Two posts with details of the hikes will follow this one over the next two days.

Shortly after arriving at my campsite, I accidentally discovered my point-and-shoot camera (an Olympus 770sw) had a macro-mode that allowed me to take some incredible closeups. As you can see from the various flower pictures, I had fun with it (look for more awesome closeups on my last hike when that gets posted).

My excursion lasted four days and three nights, Saturday afternoon through Tuesday morning. The trip was incredibly relaxing and invigorating, more so than I expected. After my second hike on Monday my feet were very, very sore. I pulled off the road, walked down to the river, took off my shirt and shoes, and walked out into the middle of the river. I found a big flat rock and laid in the sun with my bare feet soaking the cold water. It was awesome.

For several days after I returned, I felt strangely different. Relaxed, yes, but also connected -- connected to everything around me and at total peace. It was a deep inner relaxation and peace. Why didn't I feel that way every time I returned from camping? The last time I remembered feeling like that I had also been gone for three nights, so perhaps that had something to do with it. Or maybe I was able to relax a little more than usual because I had made it clear to everyone that I was really going to be off-the-grid and unavailable. Whatever the case, it was incredible. If three nights can do that much, I can't help but wonder what six months hiking the Appalachian Trail must do to a person.

Fourth April Camping Trip

The weather was beautiful this weekend (temperatures in the 80's during the day, and the upper 50's at night) and I spent most of the day on Saturday lifting logs, running, and working out around the camping area (yes, that's my idea of relaxing!). In my previous post I mentioned there would be bugs, ticks, and mosquito's in a few weeks and that it was nice camping without them. Well I was wrong; they're already there! Within a few minutes of arriving, I found ticks crawling on me around the area where I camped last weekend, so I decided to just pick a random spot in the forest near the stream.

The night was so warm that I didn't even need a fire for heat, but I built one anyway (a camping ritual, or something). I pulled stones from the stream to build a small fire pit and used birch bark to start the fire. During the night I heard something moving around the leaves outside the tent and I kept getting up to look around with the flashlight. Finally I discovered a tiny frog was periodically jumping through the leaves making all the noise.

The weather didn't call for rain and the sky was clear when I went to sleep, so I assumed I wouldn't have to worry about rain. Stupid me. I've lived in New England long enough not to assume that. I woke up around 7AM to the sound of rain drops. The front of my tent was open, and a small puddle of water had already formed inside the tent. My pack, which also wasn't covered, got wet too. Oh well, it was still warm (50 degrees) so the water wasn't that uncomfortable. While it drizzled on and off, I started a fire just to see how difficult it would be while everything was soaked -- it was easy (birch bark is amazing, even in the rain!). After eating a breakfast of oatmeal, dried pineapple, a banana, and peppermint tea, I packed up and headed home.

I didn't take many pictures this time, but here are a few anyway.

Third April Camping Trip

This camping trip took place last weekend so this post is about a week late, but I wanted to stick with writing a post for each camping trip in April, so here goes (from memory). I took a better camera with me (an Olympus 770SW) and the pictures from the trip can be found here.

I decided not to camp down by the river this time, but instead camp in a clearing about 1/4 mile from the river. The wind blowing off the water made the previous two trips very, very cold and it made keeping the fire going difficult. This trip was much warmer than the previous two, at least during the day. The temperatures reached the upper 60's on both Saturday and Sunday, but the thermometer I brought with me measured a low of 24.4 degrees Fahrenheit during the evening, and it definitely felt it.

On Saturday afternoon I hiked down to the river to see how much ice had melted. I found what looked to be a wolf print (although on second thought, it looks more like a large raccoon print), and after taking a few pictures and walking around, I returned to camp to spend the evening practicing various knots, keeping the fire going, and reading Ender's Game.

I awoke around 3AM Sunday morning with freezing cold feet and needing to pee. There was no way I was getting up and losing the small amount of heat that remained inside my sleeping bag, so I toughed it out. It's amazingly difficult to fall asleep when your feet are cold and your bowls are telling you to get the hell up.

I finally got up around 6AM to relieve myself and decided that dealing with the early morning cold and getting the fire started was, in the long run, a better idea than trying to go back to sleep and generate my own heat. There were still some hot coals in the fire from the night before and I managed to use them to get the fire started again.

I watched the sun rise and waited desperately for it to come up over the trees to heat the surrounding air. When it finally did, I spent some time exercising and and laying in the clearing relaxing in the sun. It's early enough in the season that there are almost no bugs. A few more weeks and the mosquito's, ticks, black flies, ants, and all the other bugs will be out in full-force.

Second April Camping Trip

On my way up North on Saturday, I stopped at an Army Surplus store in Milford, NH to see if I could find a decent survival knife. My old knife had a cheap stainless steel blade that broke apart last weekend while I was using it to start a fire with the magnesium fire starter. I found a nice fixed-blade Air Force survival knife with a heavy base that doubles as a hammer. It came with a sheath and a sharpening stone.

The weather was much colder than it was when I went camping last week, although a lot of the ice along the river had melted (compare the pictures of the ice from last week, to the pictures from this week). It was also a lot more windy, with frequent gusts of 25-30mph.

On Sunday morning, while it was still partially sunny and the wind was blowing, it started snowing heavily. It was very surreal (and very cold). Overall a great trip and a great way to spend my 27th birthday. Thank you to all who wished me a happy birthday. To everyone I'd like to say: Happy Everyday!

April Camping Trip

On Saturday I decided at the last minute to go camping in the White Mountains. I arrived at the entrance to the trail around 5:30pm. On my hike in, there were patches of half melted snow all around with moose and deer footprints everywhere.

That's when I heard a stick crack and looked to my left. Standing not more than 20 feet off the trail and totally oblivious to my presence was a huge 8' tall female moose. As I stood there admiring the huge creature, a sense of fear quickly settled in when I realized how screwed I was if she decided to charge at me. This was a seriously big animal. She noticed me standing there after about two minutes and after that she didn't take her eyes off me. When she made a grunting sound, I knew she was nervous and uncomfortable, so I slowly started walking away. Much to my relief, she too turned around and walked in the opposite direction. From that point on, I made noise (made up songs and talked to myself) to help prevent any further accidental run ins with big game wildlife.

The rest of the evening was quite uneventful. The place I camped was next to a river where huge ice shelves had formed. Without much daylight left, I quickly started gathering wood and material for a fire. Using a magnesium fire starter, my knife, and a small piece of birch bark, I had a fire going within thirty seconds. The fire didn't last long after I stopped feeding it and laid down to sleep.

The night was cold (<30 degrees) and constant gusts of wind made it worse. I woke up several times during the night from the cold, but managed to get about 5 hours of sleep. I awoke at 6:30am, shivering and freezing. It started to snow. I did some jumping jacks to warm myself up and then collected wood to get a fire going. Once again, the magnesium fire starter with some birch bark did the trick. I spent the next few hours feeding the fire and keeping warm before finally making the short one-mile trek back to my truck. I didn't bring a camera, but I took a couple of pictures with my iPhone. (This is the picture of the moose, but she's extremely well camouflaged. She's standing behind the clump of trees in the long patch of white snow.)

April Camping Trip

I went camping in the white mountains over the weekend. My dad and I drove up together, however we didn't camp in the same place; I camped by the river (1/2 a mile through the forest) and he stayed in the hut. I camped in the same area near the river almost exactly two years earlier with Thea and Ravi. The weekend forecast called for rain, so I made sure I came prepared. I love roughing it as much as possible, so I used birch bark to start my fire instead of newspaper. It's amazing how well it burns, even when wet. Even though I brought my laptop with me, I decided to leave it in the car instead of risking getting it wet. I did, however, manage to respond to email questions about my eBay auctions using my Blackberry -- reception wasn't great, but I was able to do what I needed every time I got a 2 minute window of reception.

Due to the Nor'easter we had a few weeks ago, there were lots of trees that were blown over. It was pretty wild -- seeing huge trees toppled over in the middle of the forest, as if a giant came by an pushed them over. The trees certainly helped with finding my way back to the hut, as they were very easy spot landmarks! My dad found a really weird foam donut created by the water in the stream. I posted a video of it on YouTube.

It felt so good to walk around barefoot on the rocks and in the mud. For Saturday night, I decided to carry four logs down from my Dad's dry wood stash. Everything was so wet that I had to constantly be feeding the fire to keep it going. I figured the effort I put into carrying the logs down canceled out the hard work required to constantly feed the fire, so technically I was still roughing it. 🙂 That night, I heard a big splash in the river, like someone throwing a softball size stone into the water. After staring into the darkness for several minutes at the shape of a big animal moving through the water, I finally concluded it was a beaver and I had no reason to worry. The following morning the beaver was still out there, swimming around and cleaning himself off. I'm still not entirely sure how the hell he could make such a loud splashing sound... it didn't sound like his tail!

Sunday morning, I managed to hit myself in the knee with my hatchet while cutting down the trunk of a birch tree to use for a morning fire. Luckily it was nothing serious, but it made me realize I need to be more careful with my body. I have a long life to live and the more damage I do to my body now, the lower my quality of life will be as I get older. If I did some serious damage to my knee(s) now, it would effect me for the rest of my life.

It drizzled on and off the whole weekend, however it was mostly warm and cloudy on Saturday (I even saw a hint of blue sky!). Sunday morning it started to rain consistently, which wasn't so bad since we left by noon. Overall, I had an awesome time. Each time I go camping, I seem to realize more and more how much I miss nature. The air smells to clean and life feels so natural. I made the decision to try and sell two of my three rental properties. I'm also going to try to make the time to go camping once a month, April - September.

September Camping Trip

I had planned to spend all day Saturday mountain biking, however when I missed my exit and took the next exit to turn around, I decided to go exploring and find out where the road went. That decision turned into an 8 hour detour!

I took Exit 40, RT 302E, off of I-93S, all the way over to RT 16N, up through Jackson, Gorham, Berlin, Milan, Errol, passing Umbagog Lake, and through the rest of Coos County. I decided to keep going and crossed over into Maine, where there were plenty of very long, very hilly, very steep roads.

I had started driving at 11am and by 3pm, I decided it was time to look at the map and figure out where I was. I really did not want to take the same road back, so I decided to take RT 17S. By chance, I found an unmarked lookout area and took some nice photos of Rangeley Lake:

I then passed by Coo's Canyon and had to get out and take some pictures:

Then passed through Mexico, Maine where they acknowledge, and apparently are proud of their connection to the country of Mexico. All of the city signs were designed with Mexican art work. I then passed this huge pivot irrigation system, something rarely seen around here:

I then took RT 2E to RT 5S, and then back on to RT 2E all the way to Lancaster, NH. I then hopped onto RT 135E back to the campsite.

Saturday evening I spent by the fire, started with my magnesium fire starter, just as I started the fire on Friday night. It's certainly a lot harder than you'd think, but I was determined to start a fire without matches or fire starter logs to simulate an actual survival situation. It must have taken me over an hour to start the fire on Friday because almost everything I could find was damp and not dry. I also took advantage of the fact that I was alone and started learning to play the harmonica.

May Camping Trip

This will be short. The camping trip was nice. I went alone this time. It was a little strange not hearing a single persons voice, not even my own, for two days straight. During the night I finally finished the base of the coding for a new site I'm working on. Once I finish the design and layout part, I'll upload the code and announce the site here. That will happen sometime this week for sure.

The weather was OK. I decided to stay in my dad's hut (a small place he built) because the ground was extremely wet from all the rain the past few weeks. My tent and sleeping bag would have been soaked. It was raining on and off the entire time and I could see half the sky was bright and blue and the other half was dark and gray.

On my way back, I decided to drive along the Kangamangus and down RT 16, instead of taking I93. It was an extra 60 miles or so (150 miles total), but a nice change of scenery. I was amazed how much of the East end of the Kangamangus had changed. They did a lot of road work including cutting down some trees, and planting grass on both sides of about 15 miles of the road.

OK, maybe this wasn't as short as I expected. : )

April Camping Trip

Well I'm back from camping. Other than the expected rain last night and this morning, the trip went well. I must have seen 4 cruisers clocking people on my way up there, and even so, I managed to avoid detection. I made it up to Loon Mountain in a record 1 hour and 20 minutes. I waited another 20 - 30 minutes for Thea, and after grabbing some coffee we headed up to my Dad's land in Littleton.

After setting up camp, we hiked down to the river. I used my compass to find the fastest way there and it was easier than I thought. Finding my way back is usually the hardest part, but using the compass I found the camp site right away. I have a very good sense of direction and generally frown upon using a compass unless it’s really necessary Now have a greater appreciation for using it. 🙂

It was a little cold during the night, but my sleeping bag kept me warm. It started to rain around 10pm (the weather called for rain at 1am). This was the first time I had used my tent in the rain, so I hoped I wouldn't get wet. By the next morning, the bottom of the tent was wet, but because of the water resistant material the tent is made of, only a little water managed to get through. Add my sleeping bag to the mix, and I was dry as could be. The rain was pretty cold, and if it wasn't for the water seeping through my tent, I would have spent the morning reading and using my laptop.

On the way back home, I passed at least 6 cruisers clocking people. There was one that I didn't see, and he pulled out behind me after I went by. I was so sure that he was going to pull me over, but he just went past me.

On Friday I discovered the TinyURL tool and I couldn't help but be amazed at how simple it was. So I was brainstorming last night about what useful web applications I could create. I came up with another really good idea to add to my current list of three. I'm trying to work on the projects one by one while simply jotting down feature ideas for the other applications.