Hiking Again

It was another busy weekend and it is beginning to take its toll on me. I had such a hard time waking up this morning. However I am here now and updating this old LJ once again.

Let's start with Friday, because I prefer chronological order to any other order when documenting the past. After work I went over to Amy's for dinner with the fishing crew from Thursday. Since I didn't catch any cod I wasn't allowed to have any, no really I just don't like fish. The dinner was great and afterwards we appropriately watched the movie "Big Fish". I had seen it before, but you can never see a good movie too many times.

Moving on.... Saturday, I did some laundry in preparation for hiking and then drove to Quincy to pick Mark up for an afternoon of fishing in Plymouth. After chatting with Sarah for a while, we went out on the pond and attempted to catch some fish. However, after three hours my fish-less streak continues. We went all over the pond, back and forth, stopped for a while, basically tried everything, but still not a bite. To top of it all off, the fish were jumping all around us. I was able to improve my casting and before long was shooting the red and white lure up to thirty feet away from the boat. Upon returning from our trip, we drowned our sorrows in food at the BBC. It was there that we learned of the death of Ronald Reagan. Very sad, although it may mean a shortened work day on Friday.

Finally, the story you all have been waiting for, Sunday. We originally planned to hike up Wildcat Mountain, but in an effort to avoid driving through North Conway we went to climb Kinsman Mountain instead. I met Kate, Mark, Clemence and Andy at the park and ride in Andover. We piled into the car and drove North up 93 towards Franconia Notch, my new weekend home. It was a packed car, but fortunately I drove so I was fairly comfortable. We mad it to the Basin parking lot in about one and a half hours. The hike was great, of course I had all my gear and had worked out a nice big loop so we didn't have to track back over the same terrain. Our first major stop was at Lonesome Lake the same place we had stopped a couple of weeks ago. The rest of the hike to the top of North Kinsman was nice, very gradual at first with a few short steep stretches. The view from the top of North Kinsman was amazing. There was a steep overlook where you could view the entire Franconia Notch area. We finally stopped for lunch on the top of South Kinsman. We were all pretty tired at this point especially the old man of the group, he fell asleep in the fetal position in the underbrush. We started back down towards Kinsman Pond after about a half an hour. The trail we took was basically just a river bed and was rather tricky to negotiate and navigate. It took a bit longer than I thought, but we finally made it back to the car at 5:30. The stats on the hike were 9.85 miles hiked in around seven hours. I couldn't believe how far we had hiked, based on the guide book I thought it would be a few miles shorter. We high tailed it out of there and went South to the Macaroni Grille in Methuen. It is the new post hiking restaurant, replacing the Olive Garden. I think I like it much better, because the food seems less manufactured. I finally dropped everybody off at around 9:15. It was a long and exhausting day, but I wouldn't change a thing.