Bike to Piedmont County line (33.38 miles)

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Maggie

This guy would be invisible if he were perched on a leaf!

After two days of blistering heat all across Oklahoma, we finally got some seasonable weather today (high of 79F), so I had no choice but to hit the road. Plus there was the small matter of wanting to work off some of last night’s apple pie.

Waterloo Road is a series of very gently rolling hills.

Inspired by yesterday’s scenic drive to see Grandma Z in Kingfisher (40 miles NW of Edmond), I decided to head generally westward along Waterloo Road. I was out a bit longer than usual, and even began to get a bit sore near the end. This is good! I’m still out of shape if I want to get anywhere on a bike in Colorado, however.

Sunflowers didn’t want to hold still with the wind whipping through

My first wildlife sighting occurred before I’d even mounted my bike, in the form of a small frog perched on the latch of the gate by the garage! I was a bit worried about him, perched so high up. He’s clearly alive, since he moved around a bit, but was still on the latch when I returned 2 hours and 25 minutes later.

And now I will bombard you with more sunflowers!

This dirt road was almost bikeable, but still had too many medium-sized rocks for my poor roady tires.

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More bike explorations in Edmond (26.8 miles)

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Maggie

A portion of today’s route

Improvised again on the bike today. This strategy paid off as I discovered a network of bike paths that don’t show up on google maps bike view yet. (I submitted a ticket, so hopefully it will be added soon). The park provided some rare hills in otherwise completely flat terrain.

I left at 10, biked for 1 hour 58 minutes, and by the time I got back it was just starting to get uncomfortably warm, even though it was only 80F. I surely would not survive summers here.

I was very happy to stumble across this bike path!

It was a gorgeous day, hitting 80 degrees by the time I was done at noon.

The snake and I startled each other before he slithered away.

Cute little guy! No idea what species, but I kept my distance.

For some reason I love power lines. I can’t explain it.

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Church, bike ride, and dinner with Grandma

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Maggie

red spotted little guy

Had quite a busy day, starting off with the late morning service at church, followed by a community lunch to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the church charter. Oddly enough, Louis was the youngest signatory of the initial charter, at the age of four.

Does he think he's camouflaged?

My breakfast nature-watch included a toad sighting on the porch in the back yard. Amazingly, this little fellow stayed put while I took as many photos as I wanted. I hope I didn’t terrify him too much.

Good hopping legs

My best attempt at identification is that he was either an Oak Toad (anaxyrus quercicus) or a Red Spotted Toad (anaxyrus punctatus), but neither of these species fit 100%. He was lacking the distinctive stripe down the back of an Oak Toad, and didn’t seem nearly as warty as all the images I could find of Red Spotted Toads. Any herpetology experts out there?

I really wanted to go for a swim here

There were miles and miles of sunflowers and other wildflowers.

After church I went on a bike ride (25 miles, 1:47) on roads up north of Edmond. I was looking forward to biking all the way up to a grid of roads that are light gray on google maps, thinking the traffic there would be non-existent. What I didn’t anticipate was that the roads would be unpaved! That alone would be fantastic with a hybrid or mountain bike (not so much with my road bike) if it weren’t for the massive dust clouds caused by any passing car. Oklahoma has been in a massive drought of course, which only compounds the issue. I improvised an alternate route without trouble. Square grids are wonderful things for the navigationally challenged!

By the time I got back, it was just about time to head over to Grandma’s place for dinner. We ate out at Applebee’s, which was mighty fine. They’ve got some killer queso nachos! And now begins the battle to stay awake until at least 10:00 pm…

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Seeing more folks

Posted on September 24, 2011 by Maggie

A tidy row of sleepy houses

The evenings in Oklahoma have been quite chilly (mid to high 50s), so I took advantage of the early morning cool air by taking a barefoot walk around the neighborhood. Walked by at least four garage sales (or tag sales, as I think you’d call them here).

The grass was wet from nightly watering, I suspect, rather than morning dew?

Louis’s parents are bird lovers, and every morning over breakfast I enjoy watching the cardinals, morning doves, and chickadees tussling for room on the ample feeder.

A pair of morning doves

Today my sister-in-law and her husband and two kids came over for lunch and dinner and blowing off steam at the park. We had loads of fun chasing the little ones around!

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Grayson, KY to Sullivan, MO (494 miles)

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Maggie

I don’t think I’ve fully caught up with the huge distance we covered today. I passed through three states I’d never seen before (Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri), made my first on-land crossing of the Mississippi river, and my first on-land crossing of a time zone. The day started out on the rolling hills of Kentucky where the temperatures crept up to 79F, and ended up in Sullivan, Missouri, where the high today was 59F.

Rolling hills of southern Indiana

Five hundred miles is a bit much to fully appreciate in one massive gulp, especially since the view from our tiny ribbon of highway was quite limited. I knew on some level that I was in Kentucky, then Indiana, Illinois, and now Missouri, and I can examine the map for hours on end, but I did not succeed in getting a really deep sense of where I was at any given time.

Closer to Illinois, the terrain becomes pancake flat.

The rest of our trip will surely be taken at a much more leisurely pace, and we’ll actually have time to step outside of the car and explore something other than gas station bathrooms. As much fun as that is. Such a shame to drive past so much without stopping! But I’m glad we’ll be in Oklahoma tomorrow.

Crossing the Wabash river

The Gateway Arch (Saint Louis, Missouri)

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Bethesda, MD to Grayson, KY (412 miles)

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Maggie

Appalachia somewhere

We’re taking three days to drive to Oklahoma to see Louis’s parents, so today marked day one. The route (google map) took us through the Shenandoah Valley on Route 66, through the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia, and about 20 miles into Kentucky, just barely missing the tri-state point of West Virginia/Ohio/Kentucky.

No, I'm not going to tell you the exposure time of my camera so that you can derive how fast we were going.

I’m writing from a Day’s Inn in Grayson, and it makes me wonder why I thought even for a second that it would be fun to go camping every night after driving for eight hours. And I didn’t even do any driving, but my brain is still fried! We had fun times on the road though. I’m sorry we didn’t get to do Skyline Drive, but it would have taken us too far south, alas. Next time!

Long, long day tomorrow, so I’ll sign off now.

steps

No avalanches here!

rainy

We had spotty rain after crossing the Eastern Continental Divide.

sunset

Some freaky clouds coming into Charleston, West Virginia

It's anyone's guess what a Magnetic Donkey Party is... seen at a TGIF

I'd never eaten at a TGIF before. I had a nice Chicken Cobb salad. And I paid close attention to the trains.

What is this thing? This so-called Pop-sicle?

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Lonesome Lake, Franconia Notch State Park, NH

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Maggie

We took Lake Trail to Dodge Cutoff to Hi-Cannon

The trail was a bit steep, and I did not trust many of those rocks. Beautiful though!

Today we did a short but challenging hike up to Lonesome Lake, and then further up to Cannon Mountain (4099′). Total distance 5.5 miles with 2621 feet of ascent. This was the first hike in which we brought along a GPS unit, and the first hike in which we ended up needing it. Go figure!

Lonesome Lake

View from the top of the observation tower

The clouds were looking ominous so we made haste down the mountain

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Russel Pond Campground, Franconia Notch, NH

Posted on September 4, 2011 by Maggie

In the morning, the chickens came to check out our tent

These guys are not camera shy at all. This is not a zoomed-in shot.

Taking a dip in Russel Pond

The next day we got up and had a massive breakfast of eggs and blueberry-apple pie. Yum! B and J had to leave to do some tending of the wedding site, so we stuck around for a while to shower and wait for their cat, Houdini, to come inside. They have raccoons and don’t like to leave her outside without the humans around. Yikes.

Then we made our way up Rt 93 again, towards Franconia Notch. We picked a campground just outside of the park, at Russel Pond, figuring the Memorial Day weekend crowd might have filled up the spots in Lafayette campground inside the park. It’s a lovely spot, with a warm pond and a beach, but the drive up there is slightly hairy. So many potholes! We spent another lazy day, reading on the beach.

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BBQ, Bonfire, and Baby

Posted on September 3, 2011 by Maggie

Don't tell the fire department.


Today we paid a visit to some friends who live further south in New Hampshire (they do have names and a more exact location, but I’m being vague since this is a public blog). B and J are the mother and father of C, who is a precocious and happy eleven-month-old girl. They were extremely generous to let us set up a tent in their yard and stay as long as we liked, even though they’ve been extremely busy with their upcoming wedding, housework, and the umpteen-zillion activities they’re always involved with. Such fun folks! We’re all computer science/physics/astronomy geeks, so it’s always fun to hang out with them.

They were clearing out some woods that used to abut the house, so as to make a backyard and future play-area for C, so we had a bonfire in the evening with many of the chopped down trees.

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Exhaustion

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Maggie

Took the day off from hiking and caught up on some reading, emailing, and laundry. I’m writing this post 7 days after the fact, and have since finished two books I was working on:

  • Deep Survival, by Laurence Gonzales. This book was written by the son of a fighter pilot who was shot down in WWII and survived a 20,000 foot free-fall. Gonzales is a journalist who has written extensively on many disasters and the remarkable people who survive them against all odds. The book is filled with the stories of mountaineers, sailors, pilots, passengers in airplane crashes, and 9-11 WTC Tower escapees.

    While throwing around terms from Chaos theory, neurobiology, and psychology, the author attempts to draw some conclusions about what separates the survivors from those who just sit down and succumb to hypothermia and are lost forever. It’s not an earth-shattering book, nor should it ever be called a scientific treatment, but asks a very important question and I happen to agree with his overall philosophy, so I looked the other way at the major faults in this overhyped book.

    Mainly, the idea is that survival is about more than what’s in your pack. A lot of it has to do with sheer luck, a strong will to live, and the ability to Be Here Now. If you can be in the moment while lost in the woods, instead of racing around in a blind panic and despairing your horrible fate, you may notice things (sources of nourishment and water, or signs of danger which you can avoid) that can keep you alive another day. This book is worth a read, especially for the outdoors-person.

  • Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card. I got this book at the campsite which has a take-one-leave-one library. Not one I would have picked out if I’d had infinite choices, but it turned out to be a lovely book. I haven’t read much YA fiction (even when I was a YA myself) so I’m still not quite sure how to get in the right frame of mind to read them. I think it takes a much more active imagination than I’ve got (at least for the world of spaceships and interstellar warfare, which isn’t my usual reading material). Even so, the book is unquestionably good, and even brought a tear to my eye a few times. Recommended for the young at heart, or the science-fiction geeks.
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Mount Washington via Lion’s Head trail

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Maggie

Tuckerman Ravine trail is almost entirely lined with nice big rocks like this.

Today the stars aligned for me to hike Mount Washington. For some unimaginable reason, I hadn’t even been gunning for this peak, despite its known awesomeness and the fact that I may not be back to the White Mountains for quite some time. How could I think of leaving this place without a hike to the highest and most wonderful peak!?

I wonder what this looked like a day after Irene?

In the morning, I took my sweet time over breakfast and coffee and my usual morning reading, so I wasn’t even ready to hit the trails until 10:30 or so. Figuring it was much too late to start Washington, I was aiming to climb Wildcat Mountain, but alas, the trail was still closed due to flooding. The park ranger stationed there to turn hikers away suggested that the trails up to Mount Washington had just opened today. Well okay, with seven hours before hiking gets sketchy, I’d just go up 3.5 hours and turn around wherever I happened to be, and not aim to summit. No problem. I took the Tuckerman Ravine trail to Lions Head trail to the summit (8.4 miles round trip).

Clouds rollin' into the ravine

Of course, secretly in the back of my mind, I really really wanted to hit the summit, if only for a minute. So I bounded up as fast (and carefully) as possible, and made it in just under 2.5 hours, averaging 28′ of elevation gain per minute. It was sort of unreal to find myself up that high after only a couple hours, but there I was, shrouded in the fog that is almost guaranteed at Washington’s summit. But it is a grand place to be, especially having got there on one’s own two feet.

Scattered clouds

I got a coffee at the summit house, and began my slow descent, which wound up taking 3 hours. All in all, a fantastic day filled with mind blowing views (except at the top). If I were to do it again, I would eat more on the trail. Way, way more. I was replacing a calorie deficit for at least 3 or 4 days afterwards, which was probably not ideal for recovery purposes.

This is the peak of Lion's head trail. I had lunch just up there.

Into the abyss

There's the Lion's head peak from above.

It's possible to take the Tuckerman Ravine trail all the way up. I can't imagine how steep that must be.

Finally made it to the top!

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Castle Trail towards Jefferson

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Maggie

The Israel River takes no prisoners


Since Route 302, the Kancamagus Highway and Crawford Notch are still closed due to damage from Irene, the parking lot in Appalachia (a popular spot) was completely filled, so we ended up not doing the Link Trail, as planned. No matter; we ended up only a few miles down the road at the Castle Ridge trailhead, which goes up towards Mount Jefferson. Got a bit of a late start, but managed a good 7 mile hike (2540′ elevation gain). Trail was in good condition, but we could hear lots of underground rivers. And the one river crossing was probably a bit deeper than usual.

There were dozens of tiny toads along the trail, but here's the mother of them all.

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