Upstate New York has been a blast so far. You wouldn’t normally consider a surprise downpour in the middle of a hike to be fun, but for some reason we were giggling like little kids. President Fillmore should be thankful he has such a pretty place named after him. I’m just glad they didn’t name it “Millard Glenn”. Who names their kid ‘Millard” anyway?
Now I’m excited to get to some free camping! Not because I’m a cheap-ass (though that’s probably true) but because it’ll be the first time since the UP of Michigan that we’ve camped without a campground.
We stopped by Syracuse for laundry and the usual Purposefully Unrushed Productivity Combo Pack: microbrewery beer ‘n blog.
Welcome to the Little Moose Mountain Wilderness. We’ve never seen camping like this before. It’s a state-managed forest where they allow camping (for free) in designated spots only, each with it’s own poop shack, picnic table, and fire pit. There’s a couple hundred of these campsites spread throughout multiple valleys.
Jess and I were talking the whole stay about how we would love to be here with all our friends because the campsites are spaced just far enough that you aren’t on top of each other, but close enough to stumble home in the dark after a nice fire at center camp.
A nice walk during the day was bracketed two scary evenings! New moon + dense forest + animals in the camp = sleepless night. All three of us were sitting awake listening to what must have been deer right below the tent. At one point I let out the most intimidating roar I could muster (ha!) to scare them away, but they just came back a few hours later. Guess I don’t play a very convincing bear.
After those two nights, we were again reminded that it can be kinda nice to have a few other humans nearby.
We drove around the south tip of Lake George before we realized there wasn’t any legal car camping there (doh!), so we made our way further north to the base of Dix Mountain. Just off the highway but far enough to miss most of the noise, there is a beautiful little lake with a couple free designated camp sites.
Feeling pretty happy with our campsite find, we settled into our usual routine: pop the tent, play cards.
There is all sorts of hiking and climbing nearby, so the area is a little busy, even this late in the year. We camped near one of the trailheads for the tallest mountain in NY, Mt. Marcy. Crazy random fact of the day: Vice President Teddy Roosevelt was camped on the shoulder of Mt. Marcy in 1901 when he found out that McKinley had been shot, making him President. The only history made while we were there was the cribbage beat-down Jess laid on me!
The next morning we made our way through Lake Placid, which seems like a cute town. They still have a lot of the infrastructure from the 1980 Winter Olympics! My personal favorite is that really long tall ski jump that takes cajonès the size of watermelons to even think about attempting.
Kinda sad to say goodbye to the Adirondacks, we made our way to Vermont. By boat, of course!!
We docked off Lake Champlain just south of Burlington, VT, so of course we went there for lunch. Such a cool town! It’s easily the most hipster town in the north we’ve seen. Another useless fact you probably don’t care about: Burlington is the smallest city to be the largest city in it’s state. Take a minute to make sense of that, I’ll be right here. … Good now?
One heavenly burger and two knock-my-socks-off beers later, we made our way to Little River State Park near Waterbury. Ahhhh. A nice campsite in a quiet state park.
We made camp and spiced up the routine with a quick bike ride down to the reservoir and threw some sticks for the dog. Fun time! We were pretty excited to wake up the next morning because…
That’s right. The best thing ever to come from a monochromatic mammal then be frozen and blended with huge chunks of the finest diabetes-inducing treats: Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. And we got a small serving for free after an above average half hour tour which cost $4 each. I call it a win! Jess’s favorite part was asking about their work shift schedule and strategy… dork.
Perfectly content with all things living, we lazily made our way to New Hampshire. “Wait, I see a sign that says, ‘National Park’ or something, let’s go that way.” After thirty minutes driving ‘that way’ and seeing nothing but a quaint New England tourist trap and gorgeous gorge, we turned back to the main road (not the Maine road, that one’s different) and continued southeast.
We arrived at Jess’ college friend’s house in Portsmouth, NH with smelly armpits and hungry bellies. We weren’t disappointed. She was a gracious host, and it was truly a blessing to get to know her family, including her 3 year old daughter and 3 month old son.
We spent enough time there to explore Portsmouth, which is leading me to run out of adjectives to describe cool, hip, vibrant, fun little cities. We went hiking all over nearby, including a local park (Stratham Hill), and a close mountain (Mt. Agamenticus).
I got to see the Atlantic up close and personal for the first time. We had way too much fun shopping:
Another recurring theme of this trip has been arriving to stay with an old friend or long-lost family member unsure of how it will go, and leaving a few days later feeling like the best of friends. Our stay in Portsmouth was the perfect example of this. We will miss them dearly, and I’m pretty sure they will miss us too. We just wanna “hug em and kiss em” (apologies to all of you who don’t understand the inside joke).
But we had to get north! Because it’s getting cold and we want to go south. If you think about it long enough, it makes sense, trust me.
Acadia, here we come!
We had a delicious meal in Portland, Maine on our way up north. It was dark by the time we pulled into the campground at Acadia National Park, and we realized that our reserved spot was a little unlevel. Nothing a couple rocks won’t fix!
We stayed two nights in the park with the hope that there would be a nice long hike we could take during the full day we were there. We’ve heard tales about the EPIC hiking in Acadia and we were pretty pumped to get a dose for ourselves. Of course, being a National Park, dogs aren’t allowed to go just anywhere. But lemme tell you, the Cadillac Mountain hike, which does allow the woofs, is one of the best of the trip!
It was pretty cold. But the wind was the real killer. Once you get out of the trees, it was enough to blow you off course, mid-step. There is a reason the rocks are bare in most these pics: any spec of soil get’s blown away. All that said, this was such a beautiful day and it was just what everyone had cracked it up to be.
We reached one viewpoint and looked out to the ocean… and there was a huge cruise ship heading out to sea! We knew Bar Harbor was a tourist destination, but the 5 other cruise ships we saw remaining in the bay once we summited suggested it was more like Dubrovnik or something.
We joined the throngs of cruisers in Bar Harbor for coffee the next morning because the best gameplans are made in warm, caffeinated spaces. We had scouted a couple places to camp up in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and I was pretty excited to see the largest tides in the world in the Bay of Fundy. But it was cold, and I had a feeling it was working it’s way up to damn cold. Voluntarily heading to the Fist of the First Men seemed a little like suicide to us. You know what they say: Winter is coming.
East coast Canadialand will have to wait for another time, we’re goin south!
"Purposefully Unrushed" 