Adventure in New Hampshire

Last Thursday, we packed up the van with the camping supplies and on Friday morning, we headed to New Hampshire for a long weekend of camping at Russell Pond in the White Mountains. The weather was great (no rain!), though very cold the first two nights. (We survived by building big fires, wearing multiple layers, and drinking a ton of hot tea.) There was a really annoying problem with yellow jackets. Apparently, because of the weather this summer, the yellow jacket population is very high. Anytime you got out food, several yellow jackets would show up to bother you. We got pretty experienced at capturing them under cups. We stayed in a really cool double-terraced campsite. On Saturday, we were on our way to go hiking when the transmission on the van died without warning. We ended up on the side of the road with no cell phone coverage. We managed to borrow a phone and call a tow truck. Then we ran into another problem: there were too many of us to ride back with the tow truck guy. Fortunately, a couple with two dogs saw us and stopped to see if we needed help. They gave us a ride to the service station. There we were forced to hang around for several hours while they determined exactly what was wrong with the car. The verdict: the transmission was completely dead and needed to be replaced. The earliest it could possibly be done was Monday afternoon. So we unloaded everything we thought we might need from the car and hired a local dude to drive us back to the campground. A whole day gone with no vacationing done yet.

That night, we encountered yet another difficulty: there had recently been a problem with a bear at this campground and all food should be stored in your vehicle overnight. Without a car, that would be difficult, and none of us relished a visit from a bear in the middle of the night. We ended up putting everything in the campground hosts' truck.

For the rest of the trip, we hung around the campground and had lots of fun.

We biked, read,

watched the sunset over the pond, attempted fishing, and went swimming and wading in the chilly mountain water. On Tuesday, we finally got the car back and packed up to head home. On the way, we stopped at Otter Rocks, a spot where one of the mountain streams flows over the rocks and makes some awesome slides. Despite the fact that the water temperature measured an icy 55 degrees, most of us hopped in and had a great time anyway.