Eugenious

Thanks to Chandra, we found our favorite fall destination three years ago. We ventured back to Clear Lake this year with two other families, both with 4-year-old sons and 1-year-old daughters (well, one’s 11 months).

We last visited two years ago, when Sylvan was half as old as he is now. He was a good hiker then, insisting on walking so much that we nearly ended our hike by headlamp. This time, he wasn’t nearly as gung ho, but he did walk four of the five and a half miles, really hitting his stride with about two miles to go. And the other two little guys walked even more than that. Even Elena walked a bit; we were so far behind the other two families due to our little boy dawdler (it wasn’t exploring, Grammas; it was dawdling) that I just let Elena walk for a while. She appreciated not being in the backpack; her brother, on the other hand, still likes being in the backpack.

For your viewing pleasure, a re-enactment:

Some natural history notes:

• When you walk around the lake, it’s difficult not to notice that the vine maple leaves appear to be dependent on the amount of sunlight they receive for their autumn color. The leaves in the full sun are red, those in the dappled forest are peachy, and there are pockets of orange and yellow.

• Chris has some animal notes to share. If life bogs him down and he hasn’t posted these within a few days, I’ll attempt to fill in.
• Mount Washington sported some large, new patches of snow. I climbed it two weeks ago (trip report to come), and my partners and I only found some of last spring’s snow. But this autumn’s snow is nothing compared to that of two years ago. I just pulled up this photo of the Sisters from 2007, and they’re covered. Not so a few days ago. But it’s raining now. Not so much hard as convincingly.

This entry was posted in the categories Friends, outdoors by julie on Tuesday, 13 October 2009, 23:16. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.