I took these pictures of some lights we saw on the dashboard as we were leaving the New Hampshire rest area. That bottom one there, that one's my favorite. It means Total System Failure of the Skid Control Feature. It's just what you want to see when you're towing a camper. Nothing like a little vehicular panic to start off the trip.
Thankfully, it was nothing serious. Although, I can think of better ways to spend $70.00.
Camping is fun but it's work. Everything takes longer. Making beds, cooking, cleaning, all of it. Still, for whatever reason, this kind of lazy girl enjoys it.
We sprang for a picnic table on Friday. Such luxury.
My son is a firebug at heart. At dawn he rises and gets dressed and heads out to get the fire going. He saw this campfire design in a outdoor survival book he has and decided to build it. He insists that every dinner be cooked over the fire and mostly I comply. It's a little more work, hell, it's a lot more work. But he's right, somehow it just tastes better.
Friday's weather was grey and overcast with some occasional mist. We stayed at the camp clearing and burning brush piles. Saturday was just about weather perfection. We decided to check out Perham's store and one of their quarries. The map said the quarry was a 15-20 minute hike through the woods. The map lied. It would have been 15-20 minutes if it was flat ground. They failed to mention that it was up. Up a mountain. A Maine mountain, not a snow capped Rocky but still.
Lots of different rocks loaded our pockets and much to the delight of my husband, the lunch cooler. Garnets and Feldspar, Smoky Quartz and Tourmaline. The trip downhill only took 15-20 minutes, maybe that's what the map meant.
We drove off the beaten path. Literally. Dirt roads with names like Darnit. Actually, that one was asphalt. We found a house for sale out in the middle of nowhere. It is newly built, small, but beautiful. The builder came by and offered us a tour. We declined but didn't tell him that before he pulled up we had looked in all of the windows and taken a picture out on the back deck, me pretending it was my own.
We also tried to canoe this weekend. A valiant effort. First problem, I cannot lift the heavy old canoe on top of the Toyota. Second, my husband made an error in the tie the canoe to the trailer process and it fell off the trailer 3/4 of the way to the pond, breaking one of the handles off the canoe and the license plate off the trailer. Third, the entry to the pond has become very overgrown with brush. Fourth, trying to push through the brush my husband broke the paddle part of the canoe paddle right off. Fifth, the tie down strap he was counting on for the ride back broke during problem #2.
Here he is dragging the canoe back uphill to the trailer.
Here's the pond.
The drive home was uneventful, we stopped for lobster rolls and the kids changed into jammies. Seven deer were spotted and we listened to "The Trouble with Miss Switch" almost the entire way. We are still recuperating. I spent yesterday on the couch with my book club choice of the month, Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner. It wasn't bad but I had just read Family Tree by Carol Cadwalladr and they had some erie similarities. Almost word for word in some cases. All in all, even though Family Tree was the plagerizer I enjoyed it more.
Today will be spent getting ready for tomorrow. The first day back to work for me and the first day for the kids at their once a week Kid's College place. Granted, it's also my last day of work for the week, but I find it taxing nonetheless. *sigh*
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