Blogs from North America - page 8122

This weekend, I am at one of my favorite places on earth - my alma mater, Hamilton College. It's finally my five year reunion time - I can't believe it's here already. I was both dreading and looking forward to the four hour drive earlier today. Since my pinched nerve has been acting up this week, four hours is a LONG time to spend in the car, especially without cruise control. But it's also a very pretty drive and as I headed up the thruway, past Albany, I started to get that feeling of coming home again. I do love this place, but can you really come home again? To give a little background, my college search began in earnest my senior year of high school. One day, in the mail, I got a brochure for ... read more

Up and on the trail by 8AM. It was nine miles to the next shelter and then town was an extra three miles beyond that. We broke it up into reasonable chunks, had a break at the Davis Path Shelter, then headed for town and a hot meal. The trail was reasonable and we made great time into town by 4PM. After a fine meal we headed back on the trail looking for a spot to put the tent. The afternoon storm was threatening and the hikers we talked to said the shelter was about three miles away. The trail wound up and down through the rhodie groves, pastures, and hard woods. We looked continually for a tent site to no avail. The trail went up and up, even though we missed the rain, we got ... read more

...when you are making such detailed lists of what's in each box. Lucky purple shoelaces from high school volleyball days, a neuropsychology book, silver sequined top, cfa books, a wetsuit that needs to get washed, umbrellas in various states of brokenness, shot glasses, pack of yellow dish sponges from the dollar store, summer study in Paris photos, spare strap for my old swatch, creme colored shiny satin ribbons nicely folded to be re-used for gift wrapping next Christmas, fuzzy grey pom-pom ball things saved for- actually I have no clue what I saved these for. Next time I need to come up with a better methodology for packing. I am sitting on the floor surrounded by piles of boxes, scary-sized dust bunnies (Char is going to kill me if I don't get rid of these monstrous ... read more

Our second attempt out of Los Angeles was successful as we finally boarded our plane enroute to Mexico City. We arrived in Mexico City and once again cruised through immigration and managed to get ourselves a cab to our hostel with our very poco spanish. This cab ride was a very fast introduction to how loco Mex City really is. The markets were on the street our hostel was on so the cab driver couldn not drive us in. He just dropped off and pointed, so we presumed we had to walk in that direction. Luckily we didn't have far to go. With 4 surfboards and 4 backpacks you don't want to walk far! We settled into our hostel which was right in the centre(thank goodness for ear plugs)These Mexicans can really make a noise. and ... read more

Quiet night, good sleeping, no rain, light wind warm with birds singing as we climbed out of the bag to start the day. It was our last day for hot breakfast and it was good. The last store was a poor excuse of a store and they didn't even have oatmeal! After breakfast it was up Chestnut Knob for a mile. The first 1/4 mile was the worst, and then it leveled off. This shelter is unique in that it is an entire building door and windows included. It is a bald knob, the folks that spent the night said the sunset and rise were beautiful. Thunder rolled as we left the knob and the skies looked threatening, time for pack covers and rain jackets. Rain did come but only drizzle and just enough to be ... read more