Woods Wind Wander

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

Wow, it's been since January since I've had the opportunity (and the emotional energy, to be honest) to update the ol' blog.  We have gone on some mini-adventures the first half of this year: a spring trip to Chincoteague, VA; Deep Creek and Cambridge, MD; and small visits to West Virginia and Pennsylvania.  I hope to write mini-posts on those excursions at some point, but I am happy to report that we are currently back in New Hampshire!  Yaaaaay!  I'm just a little excited to be here 😉 We got up at 3:30am back at home, left at around 4:15 to make the trek north.   Someone actually slept Honestly, we had a great trip up.  Traffic on the George Washington Bridge in New York City was fine and we didn't experience any major slow downs, so we arrived here in New Hampshire at about 3pm.  Being true to ourselves (and in desperate need of movement after being in a cramped car all day) we decided to go for a small hike.   Last fall I had hiked Snow's Mo

The vista from Snows Mountain This fall our trip to the White Mountains started off with some extreme mileage, a twelve mile hike (which is at least extreme to our kids), followed by two 4,000 footers.  Some times it is easy for me to get wrapped up in the "big" things like: how long is the hike, is it a famous/popular hike, is it a 4,000 footer, etc.?  But I've found that the  problem with that sort of focus is that you can potentially exhaust yourself physically and mentally (and your children!), and you tend to overlook some pretty amazing sights.  For instance, the day we drove to New Hampshire we arrived at about 4 p.m.  That is not enough time to do anything "substantial" but we walked from our house down to the river and followed the Mad River Trail for about a mile or 2.  It was gorgeous and the boys absolutely loved being along the water, the crossings, and all the rocks.  We probably would have never considered the hike otherwise.  Another such hike, 

Thrilled to have "held" (fed) a gray jay atop Mt. Jackson This is a tale of a mother and seven year old son summiting back to back 4,000 foot peaks in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and a Gray Jay that saved the day! Sunday evening I spent quite some time online doing a bit of research.  I was trying to find a few 4,000 footers that I felt would be appropriate for my 7 year old.  As our first hike of this trip would suggest ( read about it here ), both kids are capable of hiking 12 miles in a day, but honestly, I don't like pushing mileage too frequently.  No one has fun on those hikes, so I try to do my best mixing up easy and tougher trails, shorter and longer mileage, etc.  I really wanted to climb a 4,000 footer or two this trip though.  I got on Google and looked up easier 4,000 footers.  A few people have blogged on this, and given that it really comes down to someone's opinion, I tried to see if there were a few that showed up on a couple of people'