Installment #1
Fingernails Dehydrated Muck and a Million Stars
This past weekend Michelle and I took a short vacation to the white mountains of New Hampshire. It is one of our favourite hiking spots. A number of years ago we climbed Mount Washington from the Great Gulf Wilderness trail and became totally captivated by the place. Unfortunately money and time have kept us from returning until this week.
We packed as much dehydrated food as we could find and warm clothes because it is after all September (our Mistake) and headed off to New Hampshire. Actually the adventure began the night before as we went off to Mountain Equipment Coop MEC and bought fresh (if you can use the term here) dehydrated food and a new backpack for Michelle.
We packed our gear Thursday night trying, without much luck to keep it light. We left about 7 AM in the morning and headed to the US by way of Montreal Sherbrooke Magog Vermont and I93 to Crawford Notch New Hampshire. That was the condensed version of the trip in actuality we headed out without really planning the route. Most of our planning was done while we ate a very disappointing Breakfast at Casselman Ontario. I say disappointing, because we stopped at McDonalds thinking it would be fast easy and relatively safe food. At least you know what your getting right? Wrong we ordered two sausage and egg Mcbagels (or whatever) and got one BLT bagel and one sausage and egg mc bagel. Oh and as a bonus I found a finger nail in my BLT bagel but by the time we noticed the error and extra human protein we were on the road. I was lucky I did not eat the fingernail I found it in the wrapper of the bagel after I had munched half the thing. I checked all my nails first and I knew it wasn’t Michelle’s as it wasn’t metallic burgundy. YUCK YUCK YUCK ETC....
It was a bit cloudy and grey as we went through Quebec but began to clear and get surprisingly warm as we went south we crossed into Vermont at Darby Line. This was the first time I have ever been asked if I have been finger printed as I crossed the border and I think the guard was surprised when I said yes without even thinking about it. Then I quicky added it was when I was working for the RCMP as a student. As usual we passed through customs with little or no problem. The fall colours were beginning to show but most of them were yellow with a few hints of red. The weather in the east has been very mild I am not sure we even have had our first frost of the year. The countryside in Vermont is some of the loveliest in the east and the people are incredibly friendly. One thing I like is that every roadside info stop in Vermont has coffee available by donation (but I tend to donate as much as the cost because I feel guilty giving less.
We stopped in a small town were I93 enters New Hampshire for a late lunch. I am not sure if we were in Vermont or New Hampshire at this point, I will have to ask Michelle as her synapses being somewhat younger than mine work much better. As an American Blogger friend of mine (49erdweet) noted in New Hampshire "those sturdy Yankee's [have a] practice of eschewing public eateries - or else hiding them in obscure locations, far from tourists' eyes." So finding lunch was not as easy as we thought, and Unfortunately the easy going nature of residents of New England extends to customer service, they are very friendly but none too fast. As we finished our somewhat late lunch a train passed just behind the balcony. It was a small freight train and the sound of the whistle echoing through the mountain air seemed to fit well into the ambience of the warm autumn afternoon. I don't know why but trains seem to remind me of late summer or fall, possibly because as a kid I tried to make summer last as long as I could by taking long walks along the train tracks to the Mad river to fish or just throw rocks off the trestle bridge.
We arrived in Crawford Notch in the afternoon and decided to spend our first night at Zealand campsite before we hiked into the back-country areas. Our eventual destination was Mizpah Hut run by the Appalachian Mountain Club. We planned to tent on the tent platforms available but as it was three miles in and would be dark when we arrived, so we pitched our tent at Zealand campground and took a short hike into the bush and saw the silhouette of Sugar loaf against the night sky. A deer wandered into the brush as we walked up the trail, but we only got a brief look at it before it disappeared. We went back to the campsite and had our first dehydrated meal (I am having serious second thoughts on this dehydrated camping food - most of it tastes like stall mash potatoes) The night was warm and there were millions of stars to count the perfect end to a nice day.
1 comment:
Great tale, bill, on several fronts. It is interesting to hear our Yankee friends are still consistent when it comes to touring amenities.
Crawford Notch rang a bell with me, and sure enough, when I checked it out on Google Earth remembered we had gone through that country twelve years ago on our 25th anniversary trip - in the fall, too - to once-and-for-all see the famous "fall colors" [translation: autumn colours] of NE.
It was our first real trip to the least coast. We had entered NH near Conway, and then turned north and drove up through the Whites. Pretty mountains but sort of barren in many spots, as I recall.
However, since I'm from the mountains of Cali, and formerly worked in and around Yosemite valley, maybe I'm thinking of somewhere else?
According to GE it looks like "Littleton, NH" was your portal town. We had looked closely there on our trip and couldn't see anything encouraging except a couple of "Inns" that at the time weren't using exterior display signs, apparently. I'm sure if we'd stopped and asked we'd have been pointed to some type of public cafe, but since I suffer from the standard male Y chromosome defect we just kept driving until we reached St. Johnsbury, VT, and found several inviting looking public eateries.
Enjoyed VT, but not NH nearly as much - as you can probably tell. And there IS a difference between the locals, in spite of their mutual proximity. Passing strange, I say.
Dehydrated foods simply have to be reconstituted to be enjoyed, in my experience. It takes time, which when camping out is not always convenient. Once brought back to the land of the living, the ones I use seem OK to my taste. But what do I know?
Traveling and using strange MickeyD's, et al, can sure be stressful, right? Sorry about the fingernail and mixed order. In strange cities I won't leave the serving window until we've made sure everything we paid for is in the bag. And even then we still receive surprises. Happens in Cali, OR, WA, NV and the UK, too.
The most reliable service I've found in that type of environment is at "In-and-outs", but that's only a best coast chain. More's the shame. Oh, btw, if you're ever in the US south, be sure to try a "Cracker Barrel" [each located near and visible from a freeway] for some commercially authentic olde timee southern cuisine. [Shades of Brother, where art thou?].
Thanks again for your fun posting. Let me know when you and Michelle will be doing Yosemite. And sorry I got windy.
Cheers
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