Day 1: Hiking and Hiking and Camping

My real first day started with a hike in Franconia Notch. I’ve spent most of the summer and fall exhausted and stressed between the constantly changing sleep schedule from working the overnight shift, and a global pandemic. So needless to say, I’m basically in the worst shape of my life.

So I picked a hike I was planning to do in the early summer months, to get my trail legs back. Lonesome Lake is a steep three-point-something mile hike to a beautiful lake, surrounded by 4,000 footers. Because that hike is so short, I thought my liter of water would suffice, and when I decided it might be fun to add a peak to my climb, I realized that I didn’t have enough water to get me an extra few miles.

We headed back to the car, refilled my water bladder and headed north, making stops at just about every turn off on I-93 through Franconia Notch.

I saw the spot where the Old Man of the Mountain stood (before falling), and wandered around the park in honor of it.

Then Chloe and I headed to another hike, the Artist’s Bluff. I’ve heard a lot of hype about this one and the trail was very busy on the way up. Maybe that’s why I didn’t really enjoy it. The view was pretty and I’m sure during leaf season it’s great, but I hate it when there are too many people on the summit. And I know I sound like a pretentious hiker when I say this, but I just wanna sit on the summit and reflect on the hike that I just did in silence. I don’t wanna watch people take the perfect instagram photo and run around yelling. So being the grump that I am, I moved on to Bald Mountain and back down.

Our next adventure was a first and probably deserves its own post, so I’ll leave day one there. Next… camping.