Loons, Bugs, and Bears on Lake Winnipesaukee

Winnipesaukee is a BIG lake (approximately the same surface area as Cayuga Lake) located just south of the White Mountains in NH. It's a little over an hour from Manchester when the traffic is cooperating. We (Tina, Brian, and I) stayed over at Chris's condo on Long Island (not the famous one), which stick out into the middle of the lake.

The kayaking portion:


Date: Saturday, July 3rd

Distance: 15 miles

Time: 4.5 hours including breaks

On Saturday morning I got up at the ungodly hour of 5am (ok, it was 5:30 when I was done snoozing) for a 6am launch. Due to a lack of sea kayaks (or more likely morale at 6am), I embarked on this journey alone.

The lake felt very different from the Finger Lakes for a number of reasons:

1. It's not long and skinny, so you never know what's just around the corner!
   
2. Island hopping!!
   
3. More motor boats... more chop (hence the 6am launch)
   
4. Beautiful mountains on every horizon

Around 8am I met up with a loon family (two adults and two chicks). Here's a picture & movie of them!

I made it back feeling pretty tuckered out (slightly sore in the shoulders/abs), but I'm starting to have hope that I can paddle the length of Cayuga -- if we kept up the same rate (and the weather was perfect, etc...) it would take about 12 hours, which is an hour less than the hours of daylight in Ithaca in September...

The non-kayaking portion:
On Sunday morning the four of us got up "early" (9am, ha!) for a hike (Tina's first!) to the top of Red Hill, which sits between Squam and Winnipesaukee. On the dirt road to the trail head, a tiny black bear cub jumped into the road and scrambled across right in front of my car. We watched it run into the woods and join its mother and sibling 100 yards away!

It was a little under 2 miles to the peak (2,030 ft). The views from the fire tower at the top were incredible. We had a 360 degree view of both lakes, the Whites, and a number of other mountain ranges nearby.


We spent the rest of the weekend swimming, hanging out on the boat, basking in the sun (but not getting burned!), enjoying good food, and reading.

Putting my legs to good use! (Mt. Lafayette and Mt. Jackson)

So this may become my outdoor adventures blog since there are lots of other fun things to do in NH! Like climb mountains!

Last weekend (6/12 - 6/13) I joined some people (Dave, Peter, Julie, Simon, and Travis) from DEKA (where I'm doing my internship) on a one night camping/hiking trip in the White Mountains. The drive up to our campground (Lafayette Campground in Franconia Notch) took about 1.5 hrs. We claimed our turf and promptly walked to the trailhead across the road to being our trek up Mt. Lafayette. There were thunderstorms in the forecast, due to arrive at 2pm. Exactly when we planned to reach the summit. They seemed cool with that... so I put my life in their hands.

Lots of people here are into hiking the 48 peaks above 4000 ft in the Whites, so the two mountains we climbed were both on the list. 46 to go! (ha.)

Below are the trail maps for the two hikes we did (Mt. Lafayette on Saturday and Mt. Jackson on Sunday). For Mt. Lafayette we took Old Bridle Path to Greenleaf Hut and Greenleaf Trail to the summit. We came back down the same way since it was raining and Falling Waters Trail would not have been fun (as the name suggests). 8 miles total.


The top was completely above treeline, which was a really neat (and exhausting) experience. Unfortunately we were completely covered in clouds. Every once in a while a breeze would blow the clouds away and allow a view, but mostly it looked like this:


The next day we met up with Jed and took the Webster-Jackson Trail up to Mt. Jackson, where we were very excited to have a beautiful view! Then we cut over to the Mizpah hut and headed back that way.

Feeling small on the top. One of my favorite feelings :)


On the way home we stopped in North Conway to check out some gear shops that have consignment sections where people sell their used gear at a good price. I bought my first backpacking pack (Osprey)! We had dinner at Moat Mountain Smokehouse - a place that the Deka guys were super excited about (for a good reason!).

All in all a great weekend: beautiful mountains, fun bunch of people, amazing food, and a pair of very sore legs to remind me for the next three days!