Summer fun and the big 3-0!

So summer is officially here, and it hasn't wasted any time getting hot. Brooke has been keeping busy in Jen's parents pool, at the beach, down at the park and wherever else she can go to stay cool and have some fun. She's really talking a lot lately and is getting pretty independent. I guess she's at the stage now where she wants to do everything for herself. It's fun to watch and listen to her. There are a bunch of pictures from the last few weeks all lumped together here since there was nothing in particular to put up for a while. Check them out if you want, there's some good ones in there.

Bigger news is that yesterday Jen turned the big 3-0. That right, thirty years young. Saturday a bunch of people helped me throw a surprise party for her, which was actually kept a surprise, probably because of my last minute planning that didn't give anyone enough time to let the cat out of the bag. Anyways it went well and we had a great time, so thank you to everyone who showed up, helped out and made it possible. There are of course a bunch of pictures of that here if you want to see them, some that Brett gave me to put up so thanks for those too. They start off with us at the beach, which is how I kept her busy all afternoon while they set things up. After those they get to the party so don't think you're at the wrong ones if you see Brooke running around. OK, that's enough writing for now, Jen hates when I write a book so bye for now.

Weekend in Acadia

Click on the picture above to enlarge it

This past weekend a bunch of us went up to Acadia National Park to do some hiking and camping We had it all planned out for months, a long hike as well as a couple days of camping, and fortunately the weather cooperated. Five of us from New Hampshire (Greg, Jay, Mike, Travis and Myself) met Ryan and two of his friends from Mass (Dave and Takuma) up there for the weekend. We got a great weekend for it, and since only Ryan and I had been there before it was nice that the others got good weather to see the place.

We did a 13.1 mile hike that looped over Gorham Mountain, The Beehive, Champlain, Dorr and Cadillac Mountains that took 10 hours. The map belows shows the route we took and the hike pretty much followed the coastline and the ridges of the mountains in the panoramic picture above that I took from the South Ridge of Cadillac Mountain on the way down. You can probably see 90% of our route in the picture as well as all the peaks we climbed. We also drove the loop road to check out the touristy spots too. Things couldn't have gone better. Great people, great weather, great hiking and great food. Everything went perfect.

Acadia is full of sights and sounds, from the ocean to the wind to the birds to the buoys, bells and fog horns. What the people I was with probably remember the most however is the sound of my camera clicking away. I took a lot of pictures, probably more than usual even for me so I know unless you were there, and even if you were, you might not want to see hundreds of pictures from the trip so don't feel bad if you flip through quickly or not at all. But for those who were there when you get a few minutes there are a lot of pictures to see if you'd like. Get them all by clicking right here or on any of the pictures below.

Ryan and I went up into Maine this past weekend to knock a few more peaks off the New England 4000 Footers list. The weather forecast was wrong, again, the roads were mislabeled, the trails were more like brooks and the river crossings were high but eventually we made our way to the top of Sugarloaf and Spaulding mountains, #'s 7 & 8 for us of the 14 in Maine. That leaves us with just 6 to go for the NE 67. It should only take three more trips and at least two of them are such good hikes we'll wait for good weather to do them so this may have been the last of the rain for us for a while. It wasn't even supposed to rain until the afternoon but of course it started around 8 when we got to the mountain. The steady, cold soaking rain did let us try out our rain jackets though so it wasn't all bad. To see some pictures of the trip click here. That's all for now, thanks for checking in.

Memorial Day Weekend

Happy belated Memorial Day weekend everyone. Hope it was a good one for all of you. It was for us. We worked in some cookouts, walks, picnics and more. There's pictures of most of it here, the only thing we didn't get was the cookout at the Walkers because Jen told me she'd get the camera as it was in her bag and she didn't want me to mess it up, and then she forgot to get the camera so there's no pictures of that. I got the night off as she put it. It was too bad because there would have been some good ones of her and Cameron and the bigger girls playing in the yard but that's the way it goes. You'll have to settle for what I did get, which of course is quite a bit, the ones above are some of our favorites from the weekend and you can see the rest by clicking right here. That's all for now.