Acadia 2011

A quick and dirty post about the entire vacation. Lots of pictures.
1. We flew instead of driving! Hooray!!! Boy, what a difference that made. Plus found a new tradition - first morning in Maine - breakfast at Dysarts Truck Stop. REALLY good breakfast!
2. Looking for an easy, but new hike on Saturday, we hiked around Eagle Lake.

Well, not all the way around - that would be a long, long hike. But partway around and then back via the Carriage Trail. It was really less a hike and more an exploration

with stops to play in the water

or stare at things in the water.

3. Sunday, we finally did a trail SigO has wanted to do for a very long time - up to the top of Pemetic

and down around Jordan pond.

Met a really fun family on that hike. Those parents had their hands full with those four kids - three boys and one girl, but only one handful - Matthew with the long curly hair. By the end of the hike, Doug, Matthew's dad, was holding him high above his head in what he termed "the dead man's carry" - Matthew squirming the whole way. No pics of the family - to spare the innocent - and not so innocent.
4. Monday we hiked Jordan cliffs

- a new favorite after last year

with me convinced the heavens were going to open up and we were going to plummet to our deaths on slippery rocks. We never got more than a mild sprinkle. This year, instead of heading back via Jordan Pond, we climbed up higher

and came back over the top of the Penobscot mountain ridge.

Much prettier. Found this secluded little marsh at the top of the mountain.

A marsh at the top of a mountain! Weird, huh - but pretty - and zen.

H-boo picked so many blueberries her lips turned blue. I had planned on sending this to her Mom with a note saying "breathe! breathe!"

But kinder, gentler me prevailed - a rarity, I assure you.
5. Tuesday it rained like we had thought it would on Monday. So, we took on another easy hike

up and over the Gorham Mountain and back along the shoreline. Then we hunkered down in Bar Harbor to stay dry.
6. Wednesday --- duhn duhn duhn!! The Precipice.

All three of us took this on. Me with my messed up hamstring. LOML with his inner-ear problems

and H-Boo with her all too keen awareness of mortality

(I learned to dismiss that silly nagging "you're gonna die, you're gonna die, you're gonna die" voice years ago). Note to self: Never hike the precipice the day after a rain storm - lots of wet, slippery life-threatening sections, way more life-threatening than when it's dry. Still - as always - the sense of accomplishment at the top is worth the climb.

For me, anyway - not sure H-Boo would agree with that statement. But I know she was happy to be at the top - especially with these views.

My favorite line when we came to a particularly difficult and treacherous path: "Oh! Touché mountain!"
7. Thursday we got to hike with our Maine friend - Michelle

up the Beehive

which H-Boo used to think was scarey - until the Precipice. Michelle scampered up and over like a billy goat - you can tell she's hiked that mountain about 1,000 times. Thursday afternoon we tried another new hike - on the Quiet Side of the Island. We walked for a very long time with me mumbling and moaning bout the "boredom" of the hike (boy do you get spoiled in Maine, let me tell you!) when we finally came out on some beautiful views.

Plus, the views lasted for a while longer as we came back around the other side of the mountain.

8. Friday we hiked Great Head (get your mind out of the gutter - it's the name of the mountain), which we've done every year for three years now - easy hike - beautiful views

and you get to play on the rocks next to the surf without all the crowds.

That afternoon, we went to the Northeast side of the island to check out Asticou Gardens. they had a sand garden,

some really crazy plants,

and very pretty views,

but the gardens weren't quite big enough to fill the rest of our day, so Friday was another easy day - spent hanging out on the veranda of our B&B - with its great views.
We met a lot of great people out there - late at night. We also got to spend more time with Michelle and Dan. It's never long enough, because...
9. All good things must come to an end. Saturday: Last Day. We hiked Jordan Stream

a nice little hike where I went ballistic taking pictures of all sorts of mushrooms - I'll spare you the enormity of it, but here's a small sampling.

It was sad when it was over, but, another week of good memories.

Update

Wanna see something cool?! This is what happens when you try to keep from falling. Sometimes, it's probably better to just hit the dirt. Just to be clear, I never hit the back of my leg where all these bruises are. As you can see from the last post, I fell on my shin, not my butt (where there's way more padding!). The bruising is from whatever I did to the muscle. One doc said the muscle is torn. Another said it was just badly strained. I don't know how all that bruising happened from a "bad strain", but then, I'm healing up way too fast for a tear too, so who knows. I have done just about everything you can do to repair the damage, including acupuncture, therapeutic massages, and PT replete with ultrasound. I'd like to imagine it was a tear and I really do heal that quickly, but with my alcohol intake, I have to seriously doubt it. So, for now, I'll just describe it as a "blow out" to my hamstring.
But don't you think the colors are awesome? Seriously, if I dyed yarn, I'd definitely use these colors to create a new colorway and then call it Graceful - as it was my undeniable lack of gracefulness that led to these spectacular colors.
In other news, I've finished another holiday gift. I'll be very curious to see if the recipient of this gift actually ever gets to wear it, or if it will be the "temporary" property of his mate. Heaven knows I'm gonna have a hard time giving it up

On to more gifts. Also still working on the never ending bolero - who would have ever thought such a small little thing would take so long - not to mention so much yarn - had to send off for more, so it's on hold until that arrives.

I also picked up the cardigan I hibernated several years back and started it over again. I'm still trying to learn to pick instead of throw, so I'm trying that technique again (P.S. The scarf above was knit entirely picking - but then, you can't see the guage variations in the picture like you can in real life - hopefully the great colors will detract from that). I reduced two needle sizes, so hopefully this time the cardigan will fit someone other than Hagrid. My goal is to have the cardie ready to steek by Veteran's Day when I go to Georgia and have my friend help me overcome that scary hurdle. Once done, this cardie will have helped me learn three new techniques:

1. Picking

2. Colorwork

3. Steeking

that's a lot to live up to for one little cardigan.

Failure

I don't get to do much backcountry camping. It's one of those romantic notions I love fulfilling from time to time. You put everything you need on your back, and march off into the woods to conquer nature. You spend the evening in a very quiet, very secluded spot with no light noise obstructing the stars and tell ghost stories - or whatever other stories float your boat. So, around Tuesday last week, I began planning and preparing for a weekend of just such fun. Went to REI and bought new sleeping mats, a pillow, an insulated lunch sack, and a tiny little portable speaker unit for the ipod. Then I froze some chicken sausages, squeezed mustard into a baggie, packed some crackers, cheese, corn on the cob, salt, pepper and froze some butter. I was prepared! We started packing Wednesday night and were completely ready to go Thursday evening. I woke up early Saturday, eager and excited for a weekend away from the crowds and out in the woods.
It took us some driving around to find the campsite. I thought it was a wonderful omen, when, in driving around we found a yarn shop I'd never been to before: Hunt Country Yarns in The Plains, VA. It's out there a bit, but it's a really nice yarn shop, with a nice variety, including Hannah Falkenberg, Jane Slicer-Smith and Vivian Hoxbro. I bought the Net Scarf kit by Vivian Hoxbro and some Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend. A great start to what promised to be a great weekend!
Finally, after a few false starts, we found our parking lot, threw our packs on our backs and hit the trail.
For 0.5 miles. Then, little Miss Graceful (that would be me), stepped on a loose rock and went down like a sack of potatoes. I scraped up my leg a bit, but the true damage was done before I ever hit the ground. Here's the SigO marking the scene of the crime.

My hamstring stretched out like a pair of old stockings that have lost all elasticity. I didn't walk anymore - I wobbled. After rolling around on the ground in agony for a while, I ditched the pack and limped around for several minutes, practically falling over a few times as my hamstring kept giving out. SigO was all prepared to hump both packs out as well as help me limp out, but there's a time to call it a day, and there's a time to cowgirl up - and this was the latter. So, after a few more minutes of "walking it off" and some first aid, we slung our packs on again, and began the hike again.

Unfortunately, now I was really wobbly, and hesitant about every step I took. I felt I needed my poles, which I had left in the car thinking I wouldn't be needing them. Foolish. Had I had them, I doubt I'd ever have fallen in the first place. Call that lesson learned #1. We were now one mile from the car, and my ever gallant SigO unslung his pack, and left me to watch it as he literally ran (or walked fast whenever there were too many rocks on the trail) to the car and back to retrieve my poles.

I'll pause here for all you guys to sigh in jealousy. He's a sweetie. And he's hot - as mentioned in previous posts, but I digress.

According to the guide I was using to plan this little outing, we would pass 4 deep creek beds on our trail. The guide listed them as unreliable water sources - meaning if it hadn't been raining lately, they'd be dried up. Well, we've gotten loads of rain lately, so no worries, right? Wrong. Every single one of them was dry as a bone. Here's poor little toad no doubt wishing for a sip of water with no luck.

Lesson learned #2 - no less than one gallon of water per person for each 10 miles, and if there are no water sources within 10 miles - skip that hike. In this case, I think I would have needed more than 1 gallon of water though. I suppose it was from the injury, but I felt I couldn't get enough to drink all day long. So, after 3 miles, and the full realization that we weren't going to find any water, we bagged it and turned around. The bitter taste of defeat on top of dehydration - not tasty, let me tell you.

Two highlights:

The mushroomsthis is just one sample - my favorite - there were actually a lot more.
And SigO found an authentic fossil!

Don't believe me?

Check it out!I know, you're not supposed to take things home from the trail, but I think you'll agree, this is an exception.

So, we came home and I drugged myself adequately and stuck a ton of ice on the injury, and we took the rest of the weekend easy. Sad ending, huh?
Some days you get the bear, some days, the bear gets you. Maybe next time.

First Annual Festivus Insolidus

A little while back, the SigO came up with a good idea to celebrate a Festival of the Weird, or, extremely loosely translated: Festivus Insolidus. We've decided to kidnap H-Boo each 4th of July weekend and celebrate our goofy-ness.
This being our first year, we don't have many traditions established yet, so all we did was go smash crabs and drink beer (well - rootbeer in H-Boo's case).

Also made the SigO try fried pickles

- I mean, if you're celebrating weird, you gotta try at least one new weird thing, right? H-Boo tried Hush Puppies for the first time. You may not think that's weird, but think about it - frying corn bread? Doesn't seem like you could make corn bread any yummier than it already is, but then you fry it, and voila - twice the yum. Weird.
And of course, the SigO did some puppet shows for us. That's always weird. And fun.

The heat was oppresive, the music was weak, and the crowds were crazy, but we still enjoyed ourselves and look forward to expanding our experience in the future. We're open for suggestions for new "traditions".

Otherwise a slow weekend. I finally cast on - again - for the Enid Cardigan.

I attempted this once and lost a lot of yarn. First, I am trying to do the entire thing picking instead of throwing, and my picking is much looser than my throwing, so the guage was ever so slightly off. Unless you're knitting for Hagrid, and then, it was dead on. So, this time, I'm using needles two sizes smaller than what is called for. I'll take a measurement tonight to see if I'm on track.

Also, last time I tried this pattern, I twisted the stitches when joining in the round. I didn't realize this until I'd knit a fair amount, and since the pattern calls for steeking anyway, I figured I'd steek to untwist. Boy did that not work out so well, and hence - a lot of lost yarn. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I still have enough - I'm counting on the loose knitting to help out. Or, I may just order more and alternate to disguise the different dye lot.

So, a quiet fourth. But we have a whole year to think of wacky ideas for the Second Annual Festivus Insolidus.