Road Trippin' With My Two Favorite Allies

On the road again! The brothers set sail from a spectacular Cousin’s Reunion in Cape Cod north to beautiful Piermont, NH to pick up our summer counselor recruit Adam, a great friend of mine from school and head out into the hills. 

Adam joins the team

The Plan: a week backpacking throughout the New Hampshire White Mountains. 

The First Stop: the summit of Mt. Washington. 

As we arrived at Kingswood, our summertime home away from home, we received a rather rude and unexpected weather report. 

The Weather: thunderstorms, Monday-Friday with highs in the low 70’s.

Weather be darned, we said! We’ve hiked in the rain before. Heck, we went to school in the Rockies. We’ve hiked in worse. Well, not all of us. As a matter of fact the summit of Mt. Washington would be Adam’s first peak ever. As I said, weather be darned!

The weather, however, was not to be so easily darned. With dark skies covering the sunset and rain forecasted throughout the night, we revised our First Stop to swing by our aunt Mary Lou’s house in Littleton, NH. I believe Mary Lou is officially our first cousin once-removed but she feels a lot more like our aunt. And, with storms brewing on our horizon and an imminent trip to Spain brewing on hers, she took us in at a moments notice so we could start our trip with shelter. Mary Lou’s lovely hillside home was a much better base-camp than the gravely side of a Mt. Washington mountain road.

The Brothers surprise Mary Lou, our unexpecting aunt, with an inconveniently timed visit!

Early up and early out. Washington here we come. 

Mt. Washington: four hours up, including 25 minutes at the Lake of the Clouds hut for a brief respite from the horizontal rain. On our way up we encountered clouds, torrential rain, hail, white-out fog, blistering winds, a significant temperature decrease and a fleeting moment of sunlight, all of which combined to produce a summit with a 32 degree windchill, lightning to the east and west and the spectacular view of ten feet in every direction.

Amazing views....NOT.

Hiking Phase Two: Brother’s New Knits

Unclear what's going on here..

Hiking Mt. Wash – success. Hiking one more step – a wash. 

After a second surprise trip to visit Mary Lou, this on the eve of her departure, we decided, freezing and drenched as we were, to retire our hiking boots and satisfy our urge to conquer with whole new challenges of guile, grit, commitment, and a delicate attention to detail. Thrift stores, anyone?

After a grueling four town – five thrift store ascent through treacherous Northern New Hampshire, we stopped to conquer the biggest mountains yet—massive decked out burgers and fries at a hamburger joint in Lincoln. If we had learned anything hiking it was that grizzled mountainmen like us can only survive on the barbaric paleodiet of our ancestors. With guacamole on the side. And a beer to wash it down.

Hiking Phase 3: Enjoying the View

After a wonderful excursion through the White Mountains, we headed down to explore a city with a longstanding sports alliance with New York.

Bahston.

Baaaahhston.

Boston.

Enough of the woods. Back to the concrete forests to visit Ray’s great high school friend Nick Murray and more Huntington allies—Caleb and Mima!

Sorry no photo of Nick.  But Adam's faces continue to amuse us.

After an eventful night visiting Nick we made our way over to Caleb and Mima’s to see their mystical playhouse home. While there we pitched the only tent of the whole trip…on their roof...

Camping out...Boston style