2026 Happy Blog Challenge

 Happy Mother's Day!  Here are some happy things from today: Bel and Four cleaned up the kitchen and made me waffles for breakfast.  They were delicious.   Around lunch time, Keziah, Bel, a friend, and I all went to hike Mount Kearsarge.  There are two ways up, one from the north side and one the south.  We ended up taking the shorter hike up from Rollins State Park which is the southern one.  We did a loop with some rocky scramble up, and less scramble down.  At the top we rested and went up the fire tower.  I think we all had a good time enjoying the company and the views.  This is my 11th out of the 15 NH Fire Towers. View from the parking lot. Looking at the top. Almost the same shot a few minutes later. We had a few drops of rain, but it didn't last. We reached the top! (Photo Credit to Keziah) Group shot!  (Photo Credit to Keziah) Tower shot!  Keziah didn't do the tower and Bel had already headed down. Little waterfa...

 April 24th We are winding down our vacation.  This morning Stephanie and I took a walk from the resort and found trails.  The nearby body of water was just visible through the trees.  The body of water is part of or a feeder to the Nantahala River.  It doesn't seem to be named on the map app I checked.   I believe this is multiflora. There was a big rustling and so we also saw a small herd of deer along the walk.  They were going away from us through the trees, but I tried to get a picture. Somewhere, behind all those trees, are deer. There is a non-working waterfall on the resort.  Part of the walkway leading to the top of the waterfall is a stone underpass of the waterfall.  It has tiny stalactites hanging from the ceiling.  It will be very pretty when they get the waterfall working again. When Silena finished work we headed for a park with three waterfalls. It was almost three miles to walk to them, and we saw all three.  O...

 On Friday, April 17th, we completed the Foothills Trail at Table Rock State Park.  On this day, we slack-packed instead of backpacking.  That means lighter packs and ideally easier hiking.  There was a fair amount of rough terrain, lighter packs made a positive difference for me.  This was our longest mileage day at around 15 miles.   We began hiking before the sun rose and finished about an hour and a half before it set. We saw the most mammals today.  A couple of deer ran off in the distance fairly early in the hike.  There were more squirrels in this section of the hike.  Toward the end of the trail, about 1/4 mile from the Table Rock Nature Center, we saw two black bear cubs.  For a change, I was in front of Stephanie as we got close to the end of this adventure. So I spotted the bear cubs.  They were absolutely adorable!  I saw them, stopped, took three steps back and let Stephanie know.  When I first saw them, ...