Good Times

With good friends. S and I have decided that if we invite people in on a regular basis for a meal then the house gets clean. So we did just that and had the Z's and J in for dinner. Hike before but only with the Z's - J- is deeply allergic - through the Indian Ridge/Bakers Meadow loop. The swans were there but no kids as far as I could see. Maybe not a good year for swan babies - I never saw any this spring, so I don't know if the eggs ever hatched before the turtles and various local predators got them. And it was so dry and dusty with water levels the lowest I've seen them ever. Ironic that last March I was writing about floods. . .

Clean house, good food, good friends. One of the many things I love about summer.

Sucking Summer Dry

Hike Ku for Appleton Farms and Grass Rides

Again bad directions
She doesn't know left from right
And we add on miles

Hike Ku for Old Town Hill and Marsh

The Marsh washed yellow
And a ruby through the trees
day's end in August

Of these last few precious days before I return to work. Today we puttered a bit in the a.m. and headed out for a hike in Hamilton/Ipswich on a Trustee's property - Appleton Farms - complete with CSA and cows. Some unplanned hiking brought us near the cows, but most of the planned hike was in the woods and pastures edge. You can probably tell from the haiku why that was so. . . And S- is making jokes about hamburger for dinner. This Bonus Hike Ku courtesy of S - sorry baby cows

A cow licks my hand
I feel used; I'll get revenge
with my next hamburger.

A break for fried clams and HANDCUT FRIES at the Ipswich Clambake - very delicious with no lines, unlike the Clam Box up the way and well worth the stop. S- and I shared a plate, I cannot imagine eating one of those suckers by yourself although I heard a number of them ordered while we were there. Salisbury Beach for a dip and some yoga on the beach and a brief read then off again to a sunset hike at Old Town Farm and Marsh. THAT was stunningly beautiful. The mosquitoes were a nuisance, but the color and light display through the lingering day was extraordinary. And home with another 7 or 8 miles on these legs.

shouldn't have swum in the bay

ended up home sick. up all night with a miserable migraine - the first in ages and spent most of the day in headache and medication fog. no hikes for me. just sofa and books.

Sinister Swamp Hiking Day

This was a day of hazard hikes. Steep overlooks, quicksand and the EEE bearing mosquitoes. Do we love nature or what?

Ogilvie Woods in Weston with it's mythic bog. Quicksand. I do not kid. I have signage photos to prove it. (Although in this dry summer, not nearly as sinister as all that)

Purgatory Chasm with it's rock scramble, tourist hordes and empty side trails and lastly Waters Farm, which like so many hike descriptions sounded a lot more charming in the book than in the reality. 8 miles; or so about half of it sinister swampiness. A light day.

Only 9 miles

More hikes! More hikes! We went to the Duxbury round pound hike. Cranberry bogs and ponds and very pretty - but very very hot. And then over to Whitney Thayer woods for miles and miles in the woods. I am always amazed at how close we are to tens of thousands of people and we're in the woods alone. Just us. And one very brief dog encounter. And it was pleasant in the woods considering it was 90 degrees when we drove in on route 3A, but the best part of all was the open dairy bar and the raspberry sorbet at the end of it all. And after yesterday's marathon of hiking, 9 miles is. . . only 9 miles. . .

We're making up for lost time. . .

Hike Ku for Naskatucket Beach

After miles of trail
stony beach is our reward
We don't have to share

Hike Ku for Destruction Brook

3 colors, 3 boys
meet by Broadway's old stone ghosts
as Sasha runs away

Hike Ku for Slocum River

Between these stone walls
coy Monarchs play hard to get
Photo ops abound




Lost hiking time that is. We headed out very early to the south shore for three - count em - three of the 60/60 hikes. S- decided that since our hiking in Vermont had been seriously truncated we should go for 2 60/60 each day this week. Being the over achieving hiker type that I am, we went for three in spite of the forecasted 90 degree day and the triple E mosquito borne illness threat. The first part of Slocum River was lovely, marsh and estuary but the rest of it - feh. In the woods, boggy, swampy, buggy green. And with the exception of the beach and meadow at Nasatucket, the rest of the dozen or so miles we hiked, also very woodsy. I've decided my favorite season in the woods is winter followed closely by (of course) autumn during the foliage season. Summer, not so much - just a lot of green. 12 miles of green.

Northeast Kingdom

After our escape from North Hero - we are in a delightful quiet state park in the northeast kingdom of Vermont. Things are looking up - still buggy but not horrible and we have a campers beach just down the hill to swim in. Still hot and humid, but not quite so oppressive as all that and certainly far superior to Boston weather this week.

And I thought I should include a photo of the new tent. We have a screened in porch and everything. The jury's still out on the tent though. It's heavy. It's harder to put up and it's also got that stupid awning rain fly pole that kept breaking in the other tent. But if we ever need a mosquito escape that would be the one big positive in my book.

We took a walk on the park "hiking" trails to visit the bog and hope for a look at Mr. Moose but other than toads and frogs - alas no wildlife for us. And although it was a pleasant enough walk in the woods, I cannot by any stretch of the imagination call it a hike. We can hear the loons tho- all hours of day and night that haunting lonely call. I wonder why they call? And call so frequently? Is it because they like the sounds of their voices or because they want other loons to know they're around? If a loon called in an empty forest - would it still make a sound?

My Hero? Not!

Looks pretty, doesn't it? Looks. Aren't. Everything. After I spent a morning of weeping and wailing and generally being out of sorts after Sarah's departure, we decided there was nothing for it but to head off to Vermont for a week or more of camping and hiking. I've had very little tent time this summer and I miss it. And my return to work is in less than two weeks. Our first stop was North Hero State Park on one of the Champlain Islands. It SOUNDED like it would be lovely. The guidebook described a remote park, with few services on the shores of Lake Champlain. It was not lovely. Full of mosquitoes, dank, humid and with a swimming ban due to high bacterial counts, we found ourselves trapped in an unexpectedly hikeless, swimless environment. So we did the only thing possible under the circumstances. Went to the 'beach' where most of the mosquitoes were blown away by the crisp wind (Did I mention the servere thunderstorms in the area?) and shared a bottle of wine. A large bottle of wine. And when we were appropriately anesthetized against mosquitoes or really quite caring at all about much of anything - to the tent to sleep it off and plot our escape for the morrow.

Beauty School - bleh

We thought we'd have cheap hair at the beauty school. All these times, I've had great experiences. This time, not so much. Not for either of us - Sarah or me. We had a couple of very green students, and mine was not only inept at shampooing, but not really clued into my increasingly obvious statements about the shampoo and conditioner remaining on my scalp or the only partially shampooed hair. The daughter fared equally well or not in the highlights department. Oops. Oh well, I console my self with the thought that I didn't have to pay hundreds of dollars for hair fail in a pricey Andover salon. Shopping (again) I am SOOO ready to be done with shopping. And family dinner and ice cream outing which included her friend Zim and yes, that's it. We're up early and out to get the girl on a plane for her flight to L.A. and then on to Hanoi in a couple of days. I'll miss her. It's been a rich and full visit and a very short one.

60/60

Or 32/60. Hike in Thoreau's footsteps to Walden pond and back. 9 Miles or thereabouts because the author or the hiking guide SUCKS at directions.

A Mother Daughter Wedding

Of our dear Leah and William, her sweetie from UK and their Oxford days. She was a beautiful bride, he a blushing and gawky groom, and I hope that happiness continues every day for them. They are both so sweet.

We raced to the wedding from the young Kelley's having a brunch with them on the tour du Sarah. I love little kids. I really love those little kids.