Annnddd....She's Back!

Well, the past 12 months have been super lame as far as blog posting goes. In life, though, things were great. And they included a beautiful trip to the Gaspe...

I'm going to try my best to blog once-per-week this spring and summer. It won't be Noah Hoffman good, but I'll do my best. If nothing else, it serves as a good way to show Daniel what I have been up to while he's away on fires. And I'm pretty sure my Dad and Robin will be happy.

Speaking of fires ... my second annual spring altitude camp plans were messed up because of fires in Virginia. Sadie, Daniel, and I were all down on MDI for one night and day before Daniel called me mid-hike to say he was getting called off. A bit of a bummer for sure but it was still a good day nonetheless.

Eagle's Crag on Cadillac

 I took advantage of the early season to do a hike that I normally wouldn't do mid-summer because of "the masses." We took the South Ridge Trail up Cadillac. It was windy and in-and-out sunny, but still beautiful. Maybe I even stood in the same place where the Obama's stood when they visited!

The last time I hiked this trail was in middle school when we took an outing club trip to MDI. My only real memory of that day is worrying I would get blown off the mountain because the wind was so strong. My friend Anne and I would huddle behind a boulder, say One-Two-Three!, and sprint to the next boulder. Anne would never have let me get blown off the mountain. At the end of the year assembly the outing club leader gave me a "golden brick" to put in my backpack next time I hiked in windy weather. I'm a bit bigger now than I was in 7th grade and haven't needed the brick yet.

We followed our training at altitude with a rest period at sea level.

Now Daniel is off at a fire in Virginia and we are holding down the fort here in Maine. I'm reading Wildfire Loose right now - an exhaustive account of "The Week Maine Burned" in 1947. It's a very interesting account of a dramatic part of Maine history. I grew up hearing stories off the fire but until reading this book did not know how immense it really was. The fire (or, more accurately, fires) destroyed hundreds of homes and huge swaths of Maine forest, and unfortunately a number of civilians lost their lives. Amazingly, especially considering the number of untrained volunteers involved, no firefighters died. Reading about the Bar Harbor fire is particularly interesting since it had such a significant impact on what we see today in Acadia. Check out this map and see how far the fire spread on October 23, 1947. Amazing! Bar Harbor was not a good place to be on that day. 

Look what we found on a run yesterday! I hooked it under my arm and ran it 2+ miles back to the truck.

Then someone was pretty tired...

More adventures to come!