Mt. Washington

To celebrate our 10th anniversary, we decided to climb Mt. Washington, the highest peak in the Northeast.  We were really fortunate to have amazing weather. Here's Mt. Washington from the bridge between the overflow parking lot (which is located about 100 feet before the Pinkham Notch Visitor's center on Route 16-- if you are arriving after 8am on a nice weekend day, as we were, I think you may as well go straight into the overflow lot).

“We are going to climb up there?”

Crystal Cascades

Hermit Lakes Shelter

Beginning of the Tuckerman Ravine headwall.  The trail continues right behind me.  This is where the steep part of the hike begins.

View from the Tuckerman Ravine headwall.

The ascent was fun, and took us 3 hours and 20 minutes.  The top was annoyingly packed with people (with not just hikers, but folks who’d driven or taken the train up), but it was nice to be able to buy some lunch and check out the museum before heading back.  A lot of the museum is devoted to the crazy weather and danger of the mountain, which was at first, a little bit difficult to relate to on a sunny summer day.  The last video we watched talked about the “suddenness of the clouds”—how the clouds can just suddenly envelope the mountain.  I then walked upstairs to take some pictures and fill up our water bottles from a drinking fountain outside.  It was so windy that filling a bottle from the fountain was impossible, and clouds that had suddenly blown in took away any view (and so other than our picture with the sign, we didn’t get any other photos from the summit).  I sort of started to panic, and wanted to leave immediately!  So with our jackets and toques on, we headed back down.  We took the Crawford to Davis, to Boott Spur route to avoid the crowds still climbing up the Tuckerman Ravine Trail.

View of Lakes of the Clouds and Hut

Mt. Washington summit cone

At the Boott Spur minor peak (I think)

Boott Spur trail

Looking back up at Boott Spur

Panoramic Photo of the view from the overlook that’s just past Split Rock on Boott Spur trail.

The rest of the hike was below the tree line.  It took 4.5 hours for us to get down, which was much longer than anticipated, but thankfully we didn’t have to break out the headlamps.  Boott Spur is a steep and rocky trail and we both wished we’d had proper footwear for the descent.  Overall though, it was a spectacular and really fun hike.

Walking attempts

Sutton has taken a few steps here and there—her first were on May 9th.  But she was up for a little walking practice tonight, and here are the first times we’ve managed to capture her “walking” on video.  These are probably, overall, roughly the 4th, 5th, and 6th times she’s managed to string a couple of successful steps together.

Genies

Yesterday I explained the idea of a “genie” to Ashley—that you rub a lamp, a guy pops out and offers you three wishes, and then you make your three wishes (anything you want!) and he goes back into the lamp.  She loved the idea (and for the record, her three wishes are a baby, a hat, and a banana) but seemed skeptical: “What about the blue and grey thing?”

Well, after interrogating her for some time, I figured out what she meant… back in mid-October, we’d walked by a Genie window-washer lift in West Hartford Center.  Yep, that’s our girl—remembering the name and colors of some lift truck that she went by in the stroller a couple of times three months ago…

Martha’s Vineyard, Part III

Later in the day after hitting the beach, we went up to Menemsha, to grab some seafood and watch the sunset.

The next morning we drove up to Aquinnah (Gay Head) to see the lighthouse and the cliffs. 

Ashley and Leah loved running through the windy field near the parking area at the lighthouse:

After moving the cars down to a different lot, it was a long walk to the beach.  (On the walk down we figured out where to drop passengers off before you park your car.)

It got rainy later in the week, so the photos weren’t as frequent—but there is still a fourth part to come.

Martha’s Vineyard, Part II

Ashley and Leah were up pretty early all week, so they got some time to play quietly and eat breakfast together each morning.
Ashley, first thing when she got downstairs, always wanted to watch Leah’s Mickey Mouse (and “Mickey Bird”, as Ashley calls Donald Duck) iPad app.  Leah was a good sport, even though she’d probably had enough of it:

(Sorry for that one C.)
Ashley taught Leah her unfortunate, but funny habit of chanting “ALL DONE (yell), all done (whisper), ALL DONE, all done, ALL DONE, all done" when she was finished eating.
After breakfast on our second full day, we picked up some zucchini bread (the first of many loaves) at Morning Glory Farm, and headed over to State Beach for a picnic.  It was crazy windy, but empty and beautiful.  The kids enjoyed playing in the sand and we got a little kite-flying in:






More to come…

Martha’s Vineyard, Part I

(Sorry for the lack of photos the last six months or so—hopefully this post will get the ball rolling for me and I’ll fill in the gap.)

We spent the last week of September in Martha’s Vineyard with Nancy’s cousin D, her hubby C, and their kids Leah and Norah.  Our first time there, and we had a really nice time.

After both booking the 3:45 ferry, we coincidentally ended up on an earlier boat together.  I somehow took only one (horrible) photo of the view from the ferry, but I feel like I should post something showing our journey over there, so here it is:

Ashley and Sutton were great on the drive and boat ride over there:

After arriving at the house we were renting and having some dinner, it was time to get the kids ready for bed.  Ashley and Leah started an (almost) nightly tradition-- brushing their teeth together in a corner behind a dresser:

And the kids all had storytime together:

The next morning, we headed up to Oak Bluffs.

Oak Bluffs has a large passenger ferry dock, and is probably the tackiest-looking place on the island.  Still, it’s pretty nice, in the offseason at least:

We walked down to the Trinity Park Tabernacle, an open-air church surrounded by a few hundred cute little gothic-style cottages, like these ones:

Not sure what these guys were talking about here, but knowing them, it was probably snack-sharing related:

After going home for naps and dinner, we went out for ice cream.  Ashley had her first own ice cream cone.  She handled it shockingly well.

That brings us up to the end of the first full day there.  Part two tomorrow.