Of vacations and irony
So, the weather's been utter SHIT. 5 sunny days in June (one of them on Gay Pride. Apparently God Loves Fags, not hates them.)
Any how, the Wife and I decided if we're going to be stuck inside, we might as well be stuck inside somewhere not our house. So we decided to come up to the White Mountains.
The weather yesterday was shit but we're staying in a nice place that has a nice restaurant attached, so we ate until we were in pain and then rolled around our room.
Today, however, the weather was only kinda crappy, so we decided to take the pug on a hike. Feeling a little giddy because we'd actually seen the sun during breakfast, we decided to hike the ammonoosuc trail. This is a totally gorgeous trail that leads past the Lakes of the Clouds AMC hut before heading up to the Mt. Washington summit. Since we had the pug with us and we're both in the worst shape of our lives (I noted that it's a sad state of affairs when your pug is in better shape than you, and she's definitely the fittest in the family) we decided to just make the 2 mile hike to the Gem Pool.
The weather was not awesome as we started, but we know this trail and we were sure we could survive in the unlikely event we got stuck over night. Please witness how sexy my Wife is when she uses her teeth to open things like a monkey rather than using her opposable thumb:
The Pug posed for what was, unbeknownst to any of us, the last photo of her alive:
The first river crossing. The Pug was not amused when, after she refused to cross, I picked her up by her harness and tossed her from rock to rock:
On the way up. And sorry. THIS is that last pic of The Pug alive:
The weather, looking really, totally awesome:
The Gem Pool. I'd had fantasies of taking a quick dip, but once I took off my boots and realised the water was bone achingly cold, especially with no sun, I revised my plans:
We hung out for a little while, caught our breath, tried valiantly to pretend the flying, biting, nasty bugs weren't swarming all over our sweaty skin, and then decided to leave. Coming down the mountain, while certainly less heart pounding than ascending, is generally more difficult and tiring than the ascent. Certainly more knee-grinding. Mine are going to be pissed off tomorrow.
About 30 min from the parking area the sun, provisionally, came out. We were in this little magical pocket of beautiful weather while the surrounding peaks were still surrounded in gloom. We started sweating in earnest, just standing there, and that's when the pug finally laid over and was ded:
The Wife and I took a moment to mourn her and then we looked around because, seriously, SUN! And then the irony of coming to Mount Washington, of notoriously TERRIBLE weather, to find blue skies while the rest of the world apparently languishes in shitty weather made us chuckle. When our chuckling tapered off into uncomfortable silence, we got on our way because, yeah, the black flies are out.
Due to a miracle on the way back home, The Pug was reanimated. She is now Zombie Pug. Here is Zombie Pug recovering from a bath. You wouldn't believe how hard the stench of death is to get out, but the free oatmeal soap provided by the B&B did the trick:
We celebrated the end of our White Mountain hike in the traditional manner. Pizza Hut from the Littlefield PH and martinis in our room. This is the best way to get rid of your aches and pains. Maybe not the best way to get fitter than your pug, but...:
Maybe some of you noticed that that's a plastic fork in my martini and that my martini is in a "wine" glass. The glass was provided by the B&B (thank you Sunset Hill House Inn). And, though I packed a shaker, olives, and booze for the martini, I did not pack olive picks. This is an almost unforgivable oversight on my part, but the wife hasn't even threatened to divorce me over this, so WHEW. But we still had the problem of how we were going to fish olives out of our martini without picks (and holy cow, this is a firstworldprob if I ever heard one)? Pizza Hut gave us plastic forks. They have tines. I'm using a plastic fork to pick out olives from my martini. If you've been in a situation like this you know that you just have to do what you have to do. Just struggle to get by, y'all. Struggle to get by.
:)
Any how, the Wife and I decided if we're going to be stuck inside, we might as well be stuck inside somewhere not our house. So we decided to come up to the White Mountains.
The weather yesterday was shit but we're staying in a nice place that has a nice restaurant attached, so we ate until we were in pain and then rolled around our room.
Today, however, the weather was only kinda crappy, so we decided to take the pug on a hike. Feeling a little giddy because we'd actually seen the sun during breakfast, we decided to hike the ammonoosuc trail. This is a totally gorgeous trail that leads past the Lakes of the Clouds AMC hut before heading up to the Mt. Washington summit. Since we had the pug with us and we're both in the worst shape of our lives (I noted that it's a sad state of affairs when your pug is in better shape than you, and she's definitely the fittest in the family) we decided to just make the 2 mile hike to the Gem Pool.
The weather was not awesome as we started, but we know this trail and we were sure we could survive in the unlikely event we got stuck over night. Please witness how sexy my Wife is when she uses her teeth to open things like a monkey rather than using her opposable thumb:
The Pug posed for what was, unbeknownst to any of us, the last photo of her alive:
The first river crossing. The Pug was not amused when, after she refused to cross, I picked her up by her harness and tossed her from rock to rock:
On the way up. And sorry. THIS is that last pic of The Pug alive:
The weather, looking really, totally awesome:
The Gem Pool. I'd had fantasies of taking a quick dip, but once I took off my boots and realised the water was bone achingly cold, especially with no sun, I revised my plans:
We hung out for a little while, caught our breath, tried valiantly to pretend the flying, biting, nasty bugs weren't swarming all over our sweaty skin, and then decided to leave. Coming down the mountain, while certainly less heart pounding than ascending, is generally more difficult and tiring than the ascent. Certainly more knee-grinding. Mine are going to be pissed off tomorrow.
About 30 min from the parking area the sun, provisionally, came out. We were in this little magical pocket of beautiful weather while the surrounding peaks were still surrounded in gloom. We started sweating in earnest, just standing there, and that's when the pug finally laid over and was ded:
The Wife and I took a moment to mourn her and then we looked around because, seriously, SUN! And then the irony of coming to Mount Washington, of notoriously TERRIBLE weather, to find blue skies while the rest of the world apparently languishes in shitty weather made us chuckle. When our chuckling tapered off into uncomfortable silence, we got on our way because, yeah, the black flies are out.
Due to a miracle on the way back home, The Pug was reanimated. She is now Zombie Pug. Here is Zombie Pug recovering from a bath. You wouldn't believe how hard the stench of death is to get out, but the free oatmeal soap provided by the B&B did the trick:
We celebrated the end of our White Mountain hike in the traditional manner. Pizza Hut from the Littlefield PH and martinis in our room. This is the best way to get rid of your aches and pains. Maybe not the best way to get fitter than your pug, but...:
Maybe some of you noticed that that's a plastic fork in my martini and that my martini is in a "wine" glass. The glass was provided by the B&B (thank you Sunset Hill House Inn). And, though I packed a shaker, olives, and booze for the martini, I did not pack olive picks. This is an almost unforgivable oversight on my part, but the wife hasn't even threatened to divorce me over this, so WHEW. But we still had the problem of how we were going to fish olives out of our martini without picks (and holy cow, this is a firstworldprob if I ever heard one)? Pizza Hut gave us plastic forks. They have tines. I'm using a plastic fork to pick out olives from my martini. If you've been in a situation like this you know that you just have to do what you have to do. Just struggle to get by, y'all. Struggle to get by.
:)