The beauties of the surroundings of my new home are absolutely breathtaking. Here in South Portland, it’s the architecture of the cape-style homes, in Portland, the history behind the brick buildings and cobblestone roads. As I travel beyond the city, it’s the plant life, not just the abundance and varieties, but the shear heights of these trees are incredible!
With this much outdoor beauty so close at hand, it’s hard to believe it’s taken my husband and I this long to finally do a day hike. Really, we had to find a pet sitter for the dogs and I was a bit leery about letting a total stranger come into my home and play with my pups. Thankfully, we’ve found an amazing lady with a passion for animals just a few short blocks from us. We knew she was the perfect fit when she walked thru the door and Lulu didn’t bark at all! Any who, with the dogs taken care of, we planned a day hike and fully executed it yesterday. Here’s how it went down.
To start, my husband had a late ballgame Wednesday night which pushed our wake-up time back an hour. Of course, it took us a good three attempts to get out of the apartment with everything we needed. We had to stop for gas and Ananias’s didn’t have any breakfast sandwiches prepared so I had to wait for those. We took off for our hike at 10:30am, MUCH later than planned. For those of you who’ve hiked the Rockies, you know that this hike would not be happening. With the sudden change in weather on the mountains, the thin air, and the difficult level of the trails, this late start time would have been the perfect recipe for disaster. Thankfully, my husband and I were driving to the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire where the distance between sea level and mountain summit are much smaller in comparison and alleviates oxygen deprivation. There’s also much less threat of erratic weather. As for the terrain, I would say it’s very comparable, at least if I base it on the soreness I feel today.
Though we got a little turned around a couple of times (thanks Siri), we made it to Piper Trailhead by noon and began the 4 1/2 mile hike to summit Mt. Chocorua. Now I have to preface this with the fact that by the time we arrived, we had changed our plans and weren’t going to summit. We ran into another couple about our age at the bottom and the guy told us this was at least a 10-hour hike, top to bottom. This caused us some worry, as there was no way I was hiking this at night. We had decided to hike to a lookout about 2 1/2 miles up and then head back. This is where I get to brag on us a little.
My husband said we needed to, “Book it,” meaning go super fast which is much easier for him with his long, Nairobi legs than me with my Miss Piggy legs. Either way, I did my best to keep up and we hiked the crap out of that mountain! From parking lot to summit, we made it in 2 1/2 hours! And the views were totally worth it.
The descent was a little scary as it is much easier to climb up rocks than down them and apparently in my older age, I’m becoming less than thrilled with heights. Fatigue had begun to set in our legs which we hadn’t realized until we stood up after enjoying our mountain top view. It also didn’t help that on our way up, rather than stay on the path, we crawled wherever we wanted to make it to the top. This caused for a bit of confusion on the way down and thankfully with the help of a couple of nice and well-informed hikers, we found our trail to get back down. At this point, we were hungry, thirsty, and tired and still had 4 1/2 miles to go. No worries, though. We blazed that trail making it back to our car in under an hour and 20 minutes. We even ran the last 2 miles of the trail!
The drive back to South Portland went much smoother as we didn’t get lost and were able to reflect on our day over some much needed water and snacks. Back home, we enjoyed some great bar food and drinks at Gritty McDuff’s Brewpub in Old Port. Tonight’s agenda includes a four-course dinner at raved restaurant Bar Lola in Portland’s East End followed by tickets to see La Boheme at Merrill Auditorium. Just another day in paradise!
According to Holly 