Etown Fair

Here are a couple of pictures from our trip to the Etown fair this week. My little nieces are growing up so fast!

"Wow Mom, this is a cool goat, can we get one?"

Eliana wasn't into the petting zoo so much or at least not the petting part.

We did enjoy a little ride on the ferris wheel, which I think she thought was cool.

Beach Bums

About a week ago the girls spent the day at the beach. Here are a couple of pictures from our day. My nieces are growing up so fast...Eliana seems more and more like a toddler these days and Abigail is really blossoming, smiling and developing her own sweet personality. We had a great day together and I can't wait until next year when both girls are a little bigger. Thanks sistas for spending the day together!

Awesome View

Two of the nights while in NH we stayed at a great B and B. This was the view from our bedroom window. Mt Washington is 1/3 of the way in from the right on both of these photos about 40 miles in the distance. Pretty Cool!

New Hampshire Part 2

So finally, I am getting a chance to finish this post...on Saturday morning when we woke up it looked like it was going to be a decent day, so we decided we should use the opportunity to go to the top of Mt Washington. Two years ago when we had visited the area we hiked Mt Washington, this year we decided to take the cog rail train to the top. That was pretty cool. This train has a couple of world records, the one of them is that it has the steepest grade and trussed tracks at the highest elevation. So here are a few pictures from that ride.

View of Mt. Washington's Summit from the train station

One of the coal powered engines...we road on one that is powered with biodiesel

not much holding us together

steepest section of track...38% grade..wow!

View of Jefferson, Adams, Madison (left to right) from the top of Mt. Washington

Our smiling faces:)

On Monday we hiked to the top of Mt. Lafayette...one of the peaks we would have crossed had we stuck with our original backpacking plan.

The storm is coming straight for us, and it came fast. It was quite windy, rainy, and hailing as we climbed the last part to the peak.

Mt. Lafayette on far left after we were part way back down and the storm had cleared...go figure!

View of the ridge leading up to the top of Mt. Lafayette.

New Hampshire: Part 1

So sometimes in life you plan to do things and then for whatever reason they don't quite end up the way you had hoped, but in the end the fact that things changed really didn't affect the goal...having a good time and making memories. This is how our trip to New Hampshire a little over a week ago could be described. I will let the picture captions help to tell the story.

Neil smiling over the beautiful coals (and the yummy food) that he finally has to cook our supper after our 9 hour drive to NH. We learned that when the guy at the camp store says that people are having a hard time starting fires with the wood...he is not lying.

We are on the trail by 8 am Thursday morning and excited for the trip ahead of us. At this point our plan is to hike a 32 mile loop in the Pemigewasset Wilderness Area (southwest of Mt. Washington). We are planning to be out for 4 days and 3 nights, the longest backpacking trip we have done.

This is the first really good view we had of the area we were going to be hiking in. We are looking across to the ridge we will be hiking in a couple of days. The climb to get to this point was well worth the view, but we are still almost a mile away from the summit of Mt. Flume.

Neil eating some lunch while we enjoy the view and rest from our packs.

This was the view from the top of Mt. Flume...not much. We were pretty well in the clouds by this time and wondering how long it would be until we were digging out our raingear.

We made it to our tent site after climbing to the top of Mt. Liberty also...I didn't bother with a picture because all you would see is the cloud we were hiking through. We set up the tent, put on another layer of clothing and sat around for a little while before making dinner. After dinner we tried to filter water for the next day but it wasn't working, luckily we found out that the spring close by was fine to drink without filtering...and all the other ones along our route. After dinner it was time for bed and then it started...the rain.

And it didn't stop and was still raining the next morning when Neil took this picture out the window of the tent. At this point Marci is beginning to wonder if continuing is a good idea. And after some discussion we decide to head back down the mountain. This loop will still be there another year!