Regular readers of the blog will remember that friend V is an early bird and likes to start plans for everyone early in the day.
We had planned to leave at 7am, got up at 6.40, woke up ND and called V who informed me he was getting close to my house. Hurried up and packed, dressed up for the hike, and when I got out of the house at 7.05 everyone had already socialized and ready for the hike.
ND and I got into V's car. He had come with his jahaan S so it was the four of us, while in the other car were NS and her jahaan AB. Plus the smallest cutest dog in the world -- and I'm really wondering here if I should use initials for the dog here, because if someone were to unravel my identity in these posts the initials wouldn't be protecting me at all or anyone else for that matter but giving away the cute doggo's full name while withholding everyone else's does seem to be a bit unfair -- M! Who is SO unbelievably full of energy.
We stopped by at Market Basket to get breakfast and supplies for the hike. I got two bottles of seltzer, doritos, wachusett chips, carrots cucumbers tomatoes peanut butter crackers and muffins. Everyone else got reasonable breakfast items like egg and turkey sandwich and coffee etcetera. I'm not a big fan of muffins generally, specially in the morning the sweet is a bit much but heck we'd be walking all day long so why not!
After a little confusion caused by lack of cellphone signal in rural new hampshire we got to our destination the Mt. Monandock state park parking lot and realized we messed up real good for they were registrations only and we didn't make any. It was my fault partially since I looked it up and saw online they needed reservations assumed it was only for parking and not entrance into the park. The nice rangers forwarded us to a nearby park at Miller State park.
After covering ourselves with bug repellents and using their surprisingly pleasant hole toilets we began our walk at 10am. The original plan was for 9, but the shopping trip and the redirection delayed us by an our. Wasn't too bad.
The first twenty minutes of the hike are intense unending uphill climb which scared the bejeesus out of all of us but it got easier. And folks started taking it easier too, it was less of a hike and more of a stroll up a mountain really we rested at ten different places conservatively our pace was relaxed and what would take maybe fourty-five minutes of serious hiking for me, and I'm not a very good hiker, took us a good hour-and-half maybe two hours. We were at the peak, where we ate our carrots and cucumbers and tomatoes and doritos and the nuts NS had brought. We found out dog M doesn't like carrots or any other raw vegetables and he absolutely loves loves loves peanut butter and anything containing it. After spending fifteen sunny minutes in our first location we moved to a spot that claimed to be 'boston view' but we didn't see it. We were there until 1, talking about texas versus the northeast, AB's poison ivy sting, the driving styles of texan in new england the waze app places to live cheap towns good towns housing and appliances.
We headed down a little after 1, AB projected we'd be down in twenty minutes, it took us a little less than hour probably. It was so much quicker phew. S hurt her legs on the rock but not seriously so fortunately. We planned on going to a lake of some sorts after the mountain but agreed finally to go get momos in Malden and eat them at the Nahant beach.
Headed out for Malden, met again at a nearby gas station where a large part of the team got peach tea with lemonade, apparently it's really good. ND changed vehicles and it was the three of us -- V, S and I. Since we were the slower team anyway, being as our drivers were less experienced in these roads, we decided to take it easy and went into a plant nursery that also had the cutest overpriced knicknacks and vases. I wouldn't buy them necessarily but they'd be great inspirations for DIY projects. S bought two vases for her indoor plants. S and I talked about indoor plants, I told her about and showed her the pics from NP's place and she was amazed. Lots of plant talk happened.
We were so behind the earlier party we decided to skip Malden altogether and meet them straight at Nahant as they collected our momos. Ordered from our cars and drove towards Nahant. We got there barely three minutes before they did, despite them having spent a solid 40 minutes to go out of way collect momos get ice-creams and caught up with us.
The weather was already bad but we didn't give it much thought. We collected our blankets and plates of momos and walked over to the doggy beach to eat. Within five minutes we were caught in a terrible terrible hurricane whipping up the water blowing sand at our places and into our achaar. It got real scary real quick. We gathered ourselves and ran into the safety of our cars. Waited for a couple of minutes, realized it wasn't the way to go, and set off for home. Took us an hour to get home, V dropped us before heading his way despite us having come literally from in front of their place.
Caught up with everyone end the end of the weekend, took a nice little nap, a cool shower wrote a bunch, and went to bed a little after 12.
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