the squibix family blog

That's Monadnock, by the way. It could totally be a day trip from our house—it's just about an hour and a half away—but I wanted to be able to climb it in a leisurely fashion, and I wanted time to relax at a campground too. So two nights of tenting, with the climbing day in between. My original thought was to leave after Backyard Farm Club on Monday afternoon, but when I broached the idea Sunday it was too sudden for Zion. He needs more warning than that, reasonably enough. So we went Wednesday afternoon instead, after Park Day. Which means we got a late start, since Park Day is so hard to leave, and then with the steady drizzle I didn't feel great about trying to start a fire for supper so we stopped on the way for McDonalds (and a salad for Harvey at Hannafords) and got later still. Getting the tents up in the rain and rapidly falling dark was a little stressful, but we made it happen and then enjoyed a delightful evening of reading books and (in my case at least) being glad of not having to cook.

Thursday morning dawned bright and clear, and we took our first real look around the campground. It met our approval. We breakfasted on cereal and milk and bagels, then read some more before getting packed up for the main event of the day. All four backpacks were stuffed with lunches, warm clothes, and most especially water bottles, after our very thirsty experience the last time we climbed a mountain (I really should write about that trip!). At least, most of our packs were stuffed with water bottles; when we got to the trailhead Harvey found that he had left his at the campsite. For a minute he though he'd left his shoes too, so we were all set to go back, but then he found them. And I loaded him up with the almost-full gallon jug of water I had planned to leave in the car for our return, and we headed up.

The way up Monadnock is steep and long. And kind of unrelenting, really. Most of the hike is a steady slog up a wide, cobble-y path that feels a lot like a stream-bed. At least there were a few big slabby bits to provide some interest.... plus, as we got higher and higher, glimpses of some amazing views. There was also lots of water, which was delightful on what had turned into a surprisingly hot day.

Towards the top the trees started to thin out, and we really felt how high we were. And the last bit was totally exposed rock, just like a real mountain. There were even a few spots where we needed to use our hands to get up! It felt like a real accomplishment to make it to the top, and it would have been more amazing yet if there hadn't been 30 or 40 people up there already.

Oh well, at least it wasn't a couple hundred like it would have had it been a weekend. We found a spot a little ways from anybody else (and out of the swarms of bugs that for some reason were plaguing much of the summit) and had our lunches. After lunch I read the boys some of the chapter book we're doing together, and we took pictures of fall foliage and red squirrels.

Of course, having gone up we had to go down again. That wasn't easy either. We took a slightly different path, one that was supposed to be a little longer but less steep. It was steep enough, and long enough too. At one point I was sure we had already descended well below our starting point—maybe to the center of the earth. No, it just takes a long time to get down 1,800 vertical feet. Eventually we made it back to the parking lot and the visitor center, where we were delighted with the water fountain and the bottle filler. And with the benches, to be honest; I was entirely ready to sit down.

After we had restored ourselves for a little while we wandered over to the gift shop, where the boys took advantage of my pride in their endurance by buying them souvenirs: an otter for Elijah, a coyote for Zion, and a pocket knife and sticker for Harvey. Plus two gatorades. Then we headed back to the campsite. As hot as we were climbing the boys had been very much looking forward to swimming in the pond when we got back down, but it turned out that after over five hours of exertion (and seven hours away from our tents) we were ready for a rest. Good thing we brought lots of books! And good thing that I had planned a simple dinner, because I didn't have much energy for cooking (and all that I did have was taken up by starting a fire with the wet wood we collected). But never fear, there was enough fire for marshmallows to finish the day.

We parked at the Walden Woods project and walked in along the Sudbury River. We didn't take the longest path, but it was far from the shortest either. The hiking was fun, and it was actually the imminence of lunch time that kept our route from extending even farther. It was lovely and cool in the woods, and the bugs weren't bad at all (we were nervous when right at the start we crossed paths with someone wearing a full mesh veil). We got to the pond right at lunch time, and even though everyone was hungry the water looked so beautiful most of us had to take a dip before eating. And I can tell you that nobody waited half an hour (an hour?!) afterwards!

On the way home we took the most direct path to the car—only about a 20-minute walk. It would have been fine even longer though, since spirits were still high. Good outing.

Then it was up and up as we ascended the steep east side of Sargent Mountain, the second-highest peak in Acadia National Park (and the highest without a road to the top). I hadn't gone up Sargent since 2012 and the boys (obviously) never have. It's a hike, and we were doing great up the steep part over the first half of the distance up but started to feel a little sloggy as it rounded out at the top and we had to cross over one false summit to see the real top still a quarter-mile away in the distance. But we made it, and only a couple minutes late for lunch! We were hungry enough to put off the celebratory summit photo (made possible by the timer on the camera) until after we ate.

Of course, the real reason to go up Sargent is to visit Sargent Pond, and after a mile or so of descending we were more than ready for a swim. There were enough people there to have some pleasant chats but not so many that it felt crowded, and our time in the water was entirely delightful and free of leeches (leeches had been something of a concern in the planning process).

(Harvey had actually been there before, but he couldn't remember it.)

From Sargent Pond it's only a third of a mile to the top of Penobscot, so it seemed like a waste not to summit there too. Energy was flagging a bit by the time we reached the top, but you can see that Elijah still had enough juice to throw a pose.

We perked up on the long gradual south ridge of Penobscot (over a mile long), but at the end of the ridge the trail turned steeply downward and there were some very nervous moments descending steep cliffy bits on tired legs. I couldn't photograph any of the hardest sections, but this gives some sense of the overall steepness:

Just before we made it back to the Jordan Pond House and civilization we crossed a stream, where we stopped to soak our sore feet. Everyone was cheering up until, just as we were moving to leave, Lijah slipped and fell entirely into the water. He was very sad. It was a worn-out crew who stumbled onto the concrete paths and mowed lawns at the Jordan Pond House after about six miles of walking and well over 1000 feet of climbing.

The bus trip back to the car was very relaxing, as was an hour or two in or around the pool before we had to head back to the site to start the fire and cook our rice and beans. That day's smores were very well deserved.

Thrilling as it was, the tunnel wasn't the only exciting part of the outing. We've explored Hapgood Wright lots of times on foot, but bikes always let you see trails differently. This time we noticed lots of amazing downhill runs that we definitely want to go back to do some more! Of course, downhills require uphills, and there were certainly some doozies. Even before we got back to the pond to swim we were glad of a midway rest stop.

(If you want to explore the tunnel yourself, just follow our track as shown here.)

Thursday's adventure was a post-strawberry trip to Lowell-Dracut-Tyngsboro State Forest, but that one didn't go as well. Elijah was tired out from the picking, and the other boys have bad memories of riding that woods from when, the last time we tried it, they were feeling a little sick. So their energy wasn't high to start with. The only new discovery we made there was that the paths on the ground are difficult to reconcile with the map—and not knowing where we were or where we were going didn't make Lijah feel any better about the outing! Even though the older two boys had recovered and were having fun, we cut the trip short after just a couple miles.

Then on Friday we were back in Concord for a hike with friends in Estabrook Town Forest. We know it well too, though I will say every time we walk up Punkatasset Hill (88m) I'm surprised at how steep that trail is! Being there with other people let us notice some things more—like stick houses—and some things less, because lots of the time we were deep in conversation. But by far the outstanding discovery of the trip was that they spillway where the pond drains into Sawmill Brook makes a fantastic natural waterslide... but that's a story for another post!

It was also lots of fun not to be in charge of operation. Andrew, a veteran of many Fells walks and runs, led us to all the best spots. The coolest was maybe this gorge, which at some point in the early 19th century had been dammed for mills, which as some point in the early 20th century were repurposed into decorative features. It was just like one of those decorative streams in a garden, but 20 times bigger!

The outing was also made even more exciting by the weather. I'd been out to walk the dogs before we left so I was able to tell the boys to prepare for wintery conditions—and "wintery" wasn't an exaggeration! It wasn't that much above freezing, and with the considerable wind felt well below. Of course the boys complained when they were working hard in sheltered spots and got warm, but we sure wanted those coats and mittens when we got up into the wind! There was even a little snow on the last leg of the expedition.

It was considerably milder, though still breezy, on Friday when we visited Greenough Land in Carlisle with different friends. Unfortunately not quite mild enough to want to go into the water—which otherwise was very inviting!

Our friends had been there before but hadn't explored exhaustively, so they let me push on to the next fun spot and the next until we were all the way around the sizeable pond (not what they had anticipated maybe). But there's so much to see! Besides the amazing old barn—amazing for it's suburban teenage graffiti as well as it's size, complexity, and slate roof—we enjoyed the pond at several spots. The best was the dam outlet where the pond drains down towards the Concord River. We've never been there in the spring before; there was some water running!

All in all, it was a lovely two days of expeditions with many miles walked. Good thing we got a weekend to recover!

Now that the weather's turned warmer the snow can be squashy and lots more tiring to walk in, but yesterday afternoon at least the footing was fine and we could go at a good pace. But enough snow was melting that Nashoba Brook—which is really a river, at least compared to the brooks by our house—was roaring cheerfully. After I pulled the boys away from the cave, which doesn't hold as much interest for me or the dogs as it does for them, the water provided some interest as we went along. So, for them, did talking about Minecraft. Sometimes I wonder how much of the outdoors they really experience, when in their minds they're deep in the world of blocky fantasy. But that's fine, they're moving anyways—and let me say, Harvey and Zion are good walkers these days! And with the bright sunshine on the melting snow and the water rushing in the brook, even the most dedicated gamers can pause for a moment to soak it all in.

On Sunday, I took the dogs for a long walk around Fairhaven Hill. I went the opposite way than we usually go and I came down towards the river on the second half of the walk, and when I reached the boathouse—looking forward to seeing it with enough water to be usable, at last—I found that the river's rise had overshot and the whole dock was underwater. Oh well. The low path by the river was also impassible, and further along the woods looked entirely different with the water coming up dozens of yards higher and bringing the river to places that, just a couple weeks ago, felt entirely removed from it. Then in today's walk the October Farm Riverfront was even more dramatically different: a big chunk of the main path along the river was entirely under water. So was even more of the opposite shore, to the point that the boys were having trouble believing that it could ever have been as close as those trees coming up out of what looked like an endless sheet of water. If we were getting bored of visiting the same places over and over again, all this water certainly makes them interesting again!

Not having done anything like this before, I spent hours pouring over maps and guidebooks—or the online version, at least. I love OpenStreetMaps, but it doesn't have any context for the trails it shows, and it's terrible at locating parking. So I also used the official Massachusetts State Parks page, plus some guidance from other websites with details about particular trails. Nobody writes that kind of thing about places like the October Farm Riverfront (they should! I should!) but it turns out that lots of people like talking about climbing mountains. It made me much more confident in setting out last Thursday morning bright and early for the hour-long trip to the base of the mighty peak.

We got a new audiobook for the drive—The House of Many Ways, by Diana Wynne Jones—so the trip went quickly. When we reached it we marveled at the ski slopes as we drove by, then stopped briefly at the visitor center to pick up a trail map in case I didn't have cell service for at any point on the trip. It would have been less brief but the visitor center was closed—even the portapotties!—so we piled back in the car for the two minute drive to the parking lot at the trailhead where we wanted to go up.

My thought was to go up the steepest trail on the mountain, because Lijah likes mountain climbing quite a bit more than hiking, at least when he's primed with the expectation of being on an actual mountain. But I wanted to do a loop down (especially since that steepest way is only half a mile to the top!), and I didn't want to get up to the top right away and then have a long walk to finish off. So even through there's a lot at the bottom of the steep trail, we parked about a mile away and started off with a walk on a trail parallel to the road. Judging by the map I had thought it would be pretty flat, but it actually went up a fair grade, in addition to being made of boulders for much of the route. It felt delightfully mountainy! After that, though, the turn onto the steep path up was something of a disappointment when we saw that it was all stairs. At least for the second half the woods thinned out a bit and we could chose to walk on the bare rocks beside the stairs—which of course we did.

There was some disappointment at the summit too: even though I'd told them what to expect, the boys were a little dismayed to see the parking lot and the observation tower and all the people—yes, even on a weekday morning the top of Wachusett was a little crowded. But when we started to pay attention to the views I finally got the kids to understand that they were actually up higher than they had ever been before in their lives. That was cool in its own right, and it also meant that we could see pretty far (even though it was frustratingly hazy for October). There were four signs around the observation deck with labeled pictures of the landmarks you could see in each direction; spotting the tall buildings way off in Boston was pretty cool, but the massing mountains of Vermont were the most exciting. We could see Vermont! A magical place that they'd barely ever thought about before! Then we found a quiet spot to have lunch. Quiet in that is was out of the way of people, that is; the wind was plenty loud! Oh yeah, I forgot to say that whatever other ways it was lacking as a mountaintop Wachusett certainly provided an appropriate amount of summit wind.

The way down was longer than the way up, and more interesting. If I were to do the mountain again—which frankly I can't imagine doing, unless friends want to go with us—I'd definitely go up that way and down yet another way. We passed through different types of woods and one small meadow orchard, and took a little detour to visit the grandly named Echo Lake (pretty, but smaller than most ponds we know). Then it was an easy walk back to the car. The whole thing was far from the longest hike we've ever done, even outside of camping, and when after looking at the clearing haze I jokingly suggested going back up to take another look at the distant hills Harvey was ready to go for it. Really, we all could have made it back to the summit pretty easily a second time. But we did have obligations for later in the afternoon, and the audiobook was calling, so we were all happy enough to head for home... thinking about the next mountain we might climb. "How much higher is Mount Washington?" Harvey wanted to know.

One highlight was Fairhaven Bay, and the old boathouse looking out over this unexpected stretch of open water in the middle of the Sudbury River. The path went by an old boathouse, which was a lovely place to stop for a snack; we only we could have found some way to get into it! We also enjoyed climbing on an old ruined chimney (pictured here) and scrambling on some rocky cliffs above the river.

Writing on the internet suggested there were some cliffy trails to explore, but even though we walked for a while we didn't find them. A long while, actually: doing a loop all around Fairhaven Hill was maybe a bit much. We've been doing lots of hiking lately, though, so we all survived.

A couple days later we revisited the woods, this time by water. We put the canoe in at a launch near Mount Misery (which required paddling through a very shallow, algae-infested channel) and headed downstream into Fairhaven Bay. On the way we passed by the beach where Zion swam on our first visit; it was even more fun reaching it by boat. Even though the weather was sunnier we were all happy enough to be on the water that nobody felt like it was necessary to go in it.

There was enough breeze to make paddling across the middle of Fairhaven Bay exciting; you don't expect waves like that on a river trip! It was a beautiful sparkling day though, and it felt absolutely delightful to be out on the water. We saw just one other group paddling, in a pair of canoes, and we greeted each other enthusiastically—just knowing we were both doing the loveliest possible thing at that particular moment.

At the other side of the bay we reached the boathouse. I only wish there was a little more water, though, since right now the river is too low to get into it. The little streams coming out of the Adams woods were also impassible due to low water, but around them we saw lots of interesting birds.

But while the boating was fun, it didn't get us any nearer to finding the big cliffs. And nobody wanted to walk all that way again. So this past Sunday we went back with bikes. And it turns out that the Wright Woods is great for cycling, with trails that are smooth enough for even Lijah's 16-inch wheels (though his fearlessness in attacking obstacles did lead to some nervous moments for me!) and plenty of fun downhill segments. And the cliffs! Approaching them we were forced off the bikes in short order.

That may not look all that steep in the picture, but I assure you that even at that point it was just about unrideable. And it got crazier! The scramble up the last bit was a challenge even on foot!

Disappointingly, the top was a rich person's yard. They did have a very cool boat-shaped observation platform and a nice firepit, but it wasn't really a place for us to linger (though of course we did pause for water and snacks just below the top). Still, we felt like we had conquered a real climb!

After all those trips, we now feel like those woods have been pretty comprehensively explored. But that doesn't mean that we're done there: now that we know the place, we're ready to go back and have some fun!