Woods Wind Wander

Quechee Gorge Before we left home yo head north, we had planned to meet Rhys's best-friend-of-all-time (and his family 😁) in Vermont where they were going to be taking their own little summer vacation.  You may remember from one of my previous posts that Rhys' BFF's family had moved to Boston a few years ago.  We have been to Boston proper to visit them. Last year we met at another halfway point, at a state park in New Hampshire (you can (re-) read about that adventure  here ).  Naturally, this year we thought we'd expand our radius a little into Vermont 😆.  We both mapped out where an approximate halfway point for both families would be and came up with Quechee State Park in Vermont. Interestingly, the day before we were to head to Vermont to meet them, I receive a text message from my step-sister who coincidentally also happened to be in New Hampshire!  She was staying near Dartmouth (which is right near the Vermont border) with a friend and was wonderin

One of the things that I have been most excited about on this trip...Well, actually, there are a lot of things that I have been excited about.  But I have been really been looking forward to doing some smaller trips to various parts of New England. Where we stay in New Hampshire (basically the center of the state) we are only about an hour and a half/ two hours away from Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, and even, Canada.  Back home I had read a book which talked about hiking Blueberry Mountain, Maine, where the hike is mild and the top and side of the mountain are full of blueberry bushes.  My youngest son, Rhys, loves fruit.  I mean LOVES fruit.  I have memories of him as a toddler eating an entire pint of them in one sitting!  So, I made a note of Blueberry Mountain thinking Rhys would really enjoy plucking fresh ones off of the bushes, and we could see a little bit of Maine.  Yesterday we had hiked East Osceola , and it was also supposed to be rainy today so this gave us the

Not the summit, but still a spectacular view! In somewhat typical fashion for our family (beginning our time in New Hampshire with a bang (read: high mileage)), this trip started out with us attempting back to back 4,000 footers.  Why?  I'm not totally sure.  Perhaps we were feeling energetic having recently arrived, or more likely, the questionable weather forecast forced us to tackle some of our biggest hikes right away, before the impending rain.  Now, I know what you are thinking.  Yes, some hikes are completely doable in rain.  Soft trail, even trails that have tree roots are manageable, but steep and rocky terrain becomes dangerous in wet weather.  As do trails that feature cliffs or are otherwise described as "ledge-y."  I'd imagine that is what actually motivated us to check another of the 48 4,000 footers off of our list so soon: to take the weather out of the equation.   We settled on the East Peak of Mt. Osceola.  Most people hike both the mai