Let the hiking begin

Moving away from Seattle, one of the things I knew I'd miss was the incredible hiking available in Washington. Hiking Mt. Si or Tiger Mountain, for example, were yearly rituals for us, to say nothing about the amazing hiking and backpacking opportunities available a little further away. Some of my fondest memories of my years in Seattle are out on the trail, whether it was day-hikes in the Cascades or around Mt. Rainier, or multi-day adventures through the woods.

Of course, having grown up in Vermont, I knew there was plenty of hiking in New England, but I think my years of West Coast outings (including forays to all the beautiful National Parks in the West) biased me into thinking that New England hiking was inferior in some way. So it was to my surprise that Jaimee and I went on two hikes this past week and had an absolute blast. The hiking was certainly different than out West, but I wouldn't say that it was inferior.

First, last Thursday we took a ride out to Walden Pond and went for a walk around it. It was less than three miles, so maybe it doesn't qualify as a hike, but it was really fun to read about Thoreau, see the replica of his little cabin and go for a swim in the pond. Apparently there are about 17 miles of trails in the little park just 30 minutes from Boston. Certainly not an epic adventure, but a nice respite from the urban heat.

From July 2010

Then yesterday, we did a more intense hike up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It was actually quite an impressive hike. We hiked with this guy Michael that we sat next to on our flight from Iceland to Boston. He's super into hiking, attempting to climb all 4,000 ft (or higher) peaks in New Hampshire. I was vaguely familiar with the attempt that some people make to climb all 48 peaks (or all 67 peaks over 4,000 ft that are in New England), but until chatting with him I didn't really how serious some people are.

Well, we went out with him for the day yesterday and bagged our first two 4,000 footers! We hiked part of the Crawford Path, the oldest continuously used mountain trail in America. We climbed up to Mt Pierce and then continued along the Crawford Path (also the Appalachian Trail at this point) to Mt Eisenhower. All in all it was about 9 miles round-trip with about 3,000 feet of elevation gain. We had beautiful weather and the views were outstanding. By any standards, West Coast or East Coast this was a fine day hike. Here's a great view of the Mountain Washington Hotel, a huge castle-like hotel right in the mountains.

From July 2010

And of course, we took summit pictures:

From July 2010

From July 2010

Our hiking partner Michael wants to climb them all in three years. He's also attempting to climb them all in the winter, which according to the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) goes from winter solstice to spring equinox. The AMC web page goes into great detail on what this means. It seems a bit obsessive, but also somewhat intriguing. I think it would be awesome to hike them all, and I've even started my own list of them (click the NH 4000 tab on the spreadsheet). I won't set a deadline for completion, but if anyone is visiting New England and wants to do some hiking, let me know. We'll be out there as much as possible.

Multiple Fourth of July Celebrations

One of the advantages of being in New England for the 4th of July is the number of different celebrations. Each town it seems has its own party, often on different dates in order to not collide with each other. We already mentioned last week's 4th of July parade in Guilford, but this past weekend we followed that up with celebrations in Somerville, Massachusetts and Catskill, New York.

Somerville, the town right next to Boston where we're staying for the month of July had their Annual 4th of July Fireworks on July 1st. There was music by several bands, including a performance by the US Navy Band. The fireworks were quite impressive, lasting for over 30 minutes and we were very close so we could see them launch from the ground before exploding up in the air. Our apartment is really close to Jaimee's sister Janelle's apartment so we just walked over to her place and watched the fireworks together.

From July 2010

From July 2010

From Boston we drove over to Catskill, New York to visit my Aunt and Uncle Lisa and Dick. They were hosting their own celebration, the 7th annual summer party to benefit the Thomas Cole Historic Site. This was held at my Aunt's house right on the Hudson River. The party was amazing. There were 350 guests, two huge tents, a live band and an amazing fireworks display, launched from the edge of my Aunt's property by the river. We felt honored to help my Aunt and Uncle put on this fundraiser and had a blast (no pun intended) mingling with art lovers and others from the Catskill (and New York City) community. We also were blessed with incredible weather (hot, but since the party was in the evening, the weather was cool enough that the temperature was just perfect). Here's a picture of the festive tent, set up for the 350 guests:

From July 2010

Then we topped off our 4th of July celebrations last night by having a wonderful dinner with Jaimee's dad and step-mom in Shrewsbury. We love being close to them and being able to just drop by for dinner and a visit. I even picked up golf clubs for the first time in several years and went to the driving range with Jaimee's dad. (I hit a few good balls, although I definitely need more practice before I'm anywhere close to his level of play).

All in all, we're certainly getting right into the swing of things (again, no pun intended) living in New England, albeit we're still in travel mode as we're in a new location almost every night and aren't working (although I do have a few job leads). It's funny how easily we've adapted to not being on our trip any more. I think moving to a "new" city has helped our transition. I've been reading with interest the blog posts of our friends Gillian and Jason who we met in Thailand (and then met up with later in Laos) who recently returned home from their trip around the world, as it shows the many different emotions that surround the completion of a big trip. (Their friends, also returning from an around-the-world trip a few months ago wrote a very touching blog post illustrating the emotional roller coaster that is returning from a big trip). Everyone reacts differently and I think us not returning to the same city and the same jobs has helped us acclimate to living in the USA again. I don't mean to over-dramatize coming home, but for us, being with family and friends has really helped us not miss the road too much (although I think I could very easily just jump back on a bus or train and go visit new places tomorrow).

More reasons we've moved to East Coast

It's not on account of the humidity (which has been tolerable, but still fairly bad) or the bugs (including the lovely greenheads) but on account of our families that we moved back to the East Coast. We touched on this briefly in posts about the birth of my nephew Jonah and our engagement, but we're really getting into the swing of things now with family. I think our family might be beginning to realize that we're not leaving, but I mean that in a good way.

We spent this past weekend in Vermont, ostensibly to house sit for my Aunt and Uncle, but there wasn't really anything or us to do while house sitting. We arrived to the perfect house sitting instructions: eat whatever we want from the garden, so Jaimee made lovely cream of broccoli soup and fresh salad:

We went to the Guilford 4th of July parade on Saturday, which they held a week early so as to not conflict with the parades and activities of neighboring towns. I took some pictures, which you can view on Facebook. (You should be able to view them even without a facebook account, but if you're reading this blog you really should be my facebook friend anyway.)

When my Aunt and Uncle returned from their trip to Cape Cod, we went to a neighborhood potluck which doubled as a surprise 70th Birthday Party for my Uncle Neil. Happy Birthday Neil! It's hard to believe you're 70. My Aunt Betsy got him a special cake with a tractor on it (the lady at the bakery was surprised to know that the special birthday boy was turning 70):

We had a lovely time in Vermont. My cousin and I put together my bike (thanks Bevan!) that I'd shipped from Seattle and we went for a nice ride on country back roads. And then with my other cousin we went on a driving tour of beautiful houses and gardens where he does landscaping and care taking. All in all, it was a very relaxing, enjoyable time, and it's weekends like this that are the reason we moved back.

From Vermont we cruised to Cape Cod for a day and a night to visit with Jaimee's mother and aunt (visiting from Idaho) and brother Nate who lives in Hyannis. We went to an awesome drive-on beach then hung out at the outdoor fire pit at Nate's house.

Tomorrow we move into our Sommerville sublet apartment. We'll be there for a month, so if anyone is in Boston, let us know and you can swing by for a visit. Although, not this weekend, as we'll be up in Catskill visiting my Aunt for July 4th.

What we might have done differently

Faithful reader Lane commented on our Places we loved post:

I hope you'll also post on what you would do differently if you had it to do again. Given the same time and budget you had, is there anywhere you wish you'd spent less time in order to spend more time somewhere else or go somewhere you didn't have time to go? Anything you'd do smarter? If you had an extra month or an extra 10K, what would you have added?

This is a great question, and a more positive spin than a post titled "Places we hated." I'll try and answer that question with a summary of where we went:

USA - We spent the first two months road tripping through the United States, staying in the following states: Washington (2 nights), Idaho (5), Oregon (4), California (16), Arizona (5), New Mexico (6), Texas (8), Louisiana (2), Alabama (1), North Carolina (4), Virginia (1), Maryland (1), New York (3), Vermont (3) and Massachusetts (9).

Even though road trips in the US are one of our favorite activities, in retrospect we probably could have condensed this into a shorter trip in order to spend more time internationally, especially since several of the places would have been accessible as shorter trips once back home. However, it's hard to think what we would have cut, as we enjoyed each place we stayed.

Australia - 28 days. This was a decent amount of time to spend in Australia, and renting a van for 21 of those days was a great, albeit expensive idea. The only thing we would have done differently is to only travel in one direction. We started in Brisbane, traveled north to the Whitsunday Islands then back south to Brisbane again before driving to Melbourne. Instead it would have been better to pick two starting points and travel between them, moving in one direction only so as to avoid backtracking.

New Zealand - 65 days. This was our longest stay outside of the US, and it was a great choice. WWOOFing worked great, having only one bad stay out of the five farms we worked at. We wouldn't really change anything about our NZ visit, as we feel like we saw a lot of the country and WWOOFing was a great way to save money.

Southeast Asia - We toured around Southeast Asia for roughly two months, staying in Singapore (3), Malaysia (14), Thailand (14), Laos (12) and Vietnam (14). Since SE Asia was very cheap, we could have easily spent more time here. Given more time, I'd spend an additional two weeks in Thailand and probably add Cambodia to the trip. I also wish we'd gone to Indonesia. Everything we've heard about Indonesia has been great, and we wish we'd made it there. Also, we covered the Northern half of Vietnam twice, and if we'd planned better we should have only moved in one direction, instead of entering in the middle, traveling north and then returning south again like we did.

India - 33 days. Trying to decide what we would have done differently in India is tough, as we had a great time and wouldn't really want to change what we did. We traveled from late March to late April which is during their hot season so the only thing I might have changed is to go earlier in the season. Planning differently, I would have spent more time in India to see more of the country and gone either in the Fall or Winter instead of the Spring. We loved Southern India though, especially Kerala and Goa and would happily revisit those areas again.

Egypt - 13 days. As we keep telling people, and is evident from our blog posts on Egypt, we didn't love it there. Doing it over again, I would not bother going to Luxor or Aswan. I'm glad I saw the Nile, but Luxor was not that great and Aswan was even worse. Sinai wasn't too bad and done differently, traveling overland through Jordan and Syria to Turkey from Sinai would be my preferred route, taking the time we spent in Luxor and spending it in Jordan and Syria instead.

Turkey - 12 days. Turkey is another place we would have loved to squeeze in more time. As noted, traveling overland from Egypt so as to visit Eastern Turkey and Cappadocia would have been preferred. As for what we saw in Turkey, I'm happy with our tour of the western coast, although we could have easily spent more time in Istanbul.

Greece - 13 days. We liked Greece, especially Crete, but in retrospect I think I would have traded a week in Greece for a week in Italy. The problem with Greece is getting around. If we could have gone straight from Turkey to Crete to Italy, that would have been ideal, but traveling by ferry you have to island-hop, which is fun to a certain extent, but also time consuming and expensive. We also didn't love Athens, and as far as larger cities go it wasn't our favorite.

Italy and Switzerland - two days each. This was the biggest shame of our trip, in that we didn't do justice to either country by only visiting Venice and Zurich. Time was more of a constraint than money; if we'd planned it out a little better by buying a rail pass and arranging couchsurfing in advance, I'm pretty sure both these countries can be done on the semi-cheap. We hit it right with the strong dollar versus the Euro, but we didn't have enough time to really dig into either country.

Iceland - four days. As noted in our Iceland posts, I'm very happy with our time in Iceland. We could have easily spent more time there, and driving the Ring Road would have been awesome if we had more time, but I don't have any regrets as to our visit there. In fact, to some extent, I'm glad we left something for another time as I can't wait to revisit.

What would we have changed about our route overall? I think adding Central and South America would have been really awesome, although it's a large enough region to stand alone as an awesome trip in its own right. Also, visiting more of Africa would have been nice, but again, a tour of Africa would also be a wonderful stand alone trip.

Knowing that our trip overall would be as cheap as it was, I would have left Seattle a few months earlier and pushed everything forward by a couple months so as to spend more time in Southeast Asia, India and Europe. We also planned on visiting Australia first so as to meet up with Jaimee's sister Michelle who was studying abroad in Brisbane, but without that constraint, I might even contemplate going around the world in the opposite direction, i.e., Europe first, then Turkey, Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, and finally Australia and New Zealand. Then we could have done WWOOFing in Ireland, Spain, France or Italy during late Spring/Summer and been in India by Fall/early Winter and then Southeast Asia in Winter and Spring. This would have put us in Australia and New Zealand during their Spring/Winter which might not be great, so maybe we would exchange Australia and New Zealand for a few countries in South America.

So many possibilities, I could write all day about potential trip itineraries and ideas. But again, I can't emphasize enough how much we loved what we did do and have very few regrets. It turned out great, although I'm sure I'll spend the rest of my life playing "what-ifs" with our trip.