Kristin Janz

It’s been almost a month since Donald and I got back from our honeymoon, and I’m just getting around to blogging about it now. Donald has already written about it here and here.

In case you haven’t read Donald’s posts, I should start off by saying that we took an overnight flight to Rome from Boston on Tuesday (May 10th), and arrived in Rome early Wednesday morning. I think Donald may have gotten a bit of sleep on the flight over, but I didn’t.

We spent 7 nights in Rome, staying at the Hotel San Pietrino in the Prati neighborhood of Rome, north of the Vatican. I liked the location, as it was far enough away from the Vatican that it wasn’t crowded and touristy. There was a great coffee shop across the street where I could have my morning espresso or cappucino and a pastry, and a gelato shop a few doors down. I found the hotel in the Lonely Planet guidebook, and I agree with the authors that it was “a fabulous choice”, but have to disagree most strenuously about the “comfortable beds”. I don’t think I’ve slept in a harder bed since my trip to Japan, where I mostly slept on not-very-thick futons on the floor. Donald liked that the hotel had wi-fi.

We ate lunch at a place called Hostaria dei Bastioni, just outside the Vatican walls. In fact, you can see the walls in this picture, behind Donald.

You can see the walls on the right-hand side of the picture, across the street from the restaurant

The restaurant was okay, but nothing special. Despite what Donald implies in his post, I don’t insist on eating only at restaurants I found in a guidebook. I do think it’s good to have a destination in mind when you’re going out to eat in a strange place; then, if you find something that looks better along the way, you can go there instead. Also, if you’re in a very touristy area where most of the restaurants have big menus out front in 4 different languages, it can be good to know where else to go instead. Restaurants in Rome can also be kind of expensive, so the guidebook was helpful in identifying places that were more moderately priced, since I kind of wanted to have a reasonably decent sit-down meal at least once a day, rather than just grabbing pizza or a sandwich whenever we got hungry, and Donald kind of wanted to not spend over a hundred dollars on each of these meals.

In any case, I did find this lunch restaurant in the Frommer’s guidebook, which tends to have better restaurant recommendations than Lonely Planet, though they’re still kind of hit or miss, especially in the “inexpensive” category.

Speaking of guidebooks, this was my first international vacation since getting a Kindle, so instead of lugging around big paper guidebooks (or photocopying selected pages), I bought both the Frommer’s and Lonely Planet guides for the Kindle. The Kindle editions are definitely better than trying to carry around a thick guidebook when you’re already trying to find room in your purse for a bottle of water, a camera, a wallet, a wrap for the evening in case it gets cold, and maybe an umbrella, and your husband doesn’t want to carry any more of your stuff in his backpack. However, the maps in the Lonely Planet guidebook are completely useless in the e-book edition, whereas they’re somewhat useful in the paper books (you still need to buy a more detailed map of whatever city you’re in, especially if it’s a city like Rome with confusing streets). Of course, the Frommer’s maps are useless even in the paper edition, so no change there. The Lonely Planet e-book is better organized overall (the Frommer’s doesn’t even have a Table of Contents! For shame!). But I found myself using the Frommer’s more, not just for restaurants, but also for more useful and detailed information about various attractions. (Lonely Planet is better for hotels though, if you like to stay at cheaper places like we do.)

After lunch we went to the Pantheon.

You can't see the dome part too well from here

The streets around here are very narrow and confusing, and very crowded, as this is the historic city center, full of tourist attractions. On my last trip to Rome, I spent quite a bit of time wandering around in this area, getting lost, seeing whatever I happened to come across. But Donald’s not quite as much of a fan of wandering aimlessly through strange cities, so we didn’t do that as often on this trip.

We had walked to the Pantheon from our hotel, but on the way back we decided to take the metro. I dragged Donald past the Trevi Fountain on our way to the metro. It was sort of on the way. And it’s famous.

The famous Trevi Fountain

For dinner, we went to another restaurant I found in the Frommer’s guidebook, this one a Sicilian place called Sicilia in Bocca (which I think means something like “Sicily in the mouth”). I had a fava bean and greens soup, which I liked, and something else I can’t remember. Donald had a seafood salad, and then beef rolls (thin slices of beef that were breaded, fried, and rolled around a filling). I liked the food here a lot better than at the place next to the Vatican. It was also more expensive, even though it was listed in the “Inexpensive” section of the Frommer’s guidebook.

On our walk back to the hotel, I noticed a nearby pizzeria that looked good, and made a note of it for future evenings, even though it wasn’t in the guidebook.

This may have been an ambitious schedule for our first day in Rome, with almost no sleep the night before. But the next day would be even more tiring.

(to be continued)

A few years ago, I got an ice-cream maker for Christmas. I’d really wanted an ice-cream maker, and I got exactly the one I’d wanted (maybe this was because I’d put it on my Amazon wish list). For the first few months, I made ice-cream pretty much every week. Remember that I live in New England, and I got the ice-cream maker for Christmas (though apparently Bostonians have the nation’s highest per capita winter consumption of ice-cream).

However, gradually my initial frenetic ice-cream making pace slacked off, and now I think I make ice-cream maybe once or twice a year. Usually vanilla, to accompany pie or some other dessert for a special occasion. (Donald no doubt wishes I would increase the amount of homemade ice-cream appearing on our table at the expense of, perhaps, vegetables.) I still like ice-cream, and I still enjoy making it. It’s not even that much work. But, other things seem to have gotten in the way.

A glance at the number of blog posts I’ve written each month since I started this blog a little over a year ago might suggest that a similar thing has happened with this blog. 11 posts in May of 2010. 11 in June. 17 in July (a record!). Back down to 15 in August. And down, and down. Well. You can see the stats for yourself. I just got married*, and I haven’t even blogged about the wedding or our honeymoon trip to Italy. I mean, if I can ramble on for pages about a visit to the Tabasco sauce factory, surely I can make time to write about my trip to Italy?

Well, maybe. Probably not tonight though, since I’ve just used all my blogging time complaining about the fact that I haven’t been blogging.

In the meantime, if you’re desperately curious about the wedding and honeymoon, my husband Donald has been way better about keeping up with his blog than I have, so feel free to check out what he has to say.

* This may have something to do with the fact that I haven’t had much time for blogging the last few months.

A couple weekends ago (Columbus Day weekend in the US, Thanksgiving weekend in Canada), Donald and I went to Montreal, driving up on Friday morning and coming back on Sunday (thus hoping to avoid the long weekend traffic back into Boston on Monday, which unfortunately didn’t work quite as well as we’d hoped; others must have had the same idea). We stayed with my friend Rene (Donald’s friend too, now, on Facebook!), whom I know from science fiction conventions. (Rene was chair of the 2009 Worldcon in Montreal.)

The weather was beautiful, if on the chilly side. I hadn’t been to Montreal in a number of years, since my sister Lisa graduated from McGill and moved away (I used to visit her fairly often). I guess it’s hard to notice everything that’s different, when you didn’t actually live in a place, and haven’t visited in a long time. I did notice that there’s significantly more English on signs these days, hot dogs now being referred to as hot dogs, rather than “chiens chauds”. Rene confirmed that the authorities have, in fact, lightened up on French language requirements for signs. Apparently, about 90% of the complaints about English on signs were coming from about 3 people, so it was decided that there was not, in fact, widespread concern about English on signs contributing to the eroding of Francophone heritage.

On Friday evening, Rene cooked some yummy tofu tacos for us, and then we went to see the annual Chinese lantern exhibit at the Montreal Botanical Garden. It was really amazing, and I’m glad Rene suggested it.

On Saturday, we headed out to see Old Montreal, after a stop in the Plateau district for poutine. Lots of walking! Saturday evening, the three of us plus Rene’s daughter went out for dinner to, of all places, a restaurant specializing in Louisiana cuisine (called, perhaps unimaginatively, La Louisiane). I guess the Cajun/Creole food overdose from our recent Louisiana trip had worn off! The food was good, though not quite as good as in Louisiana.

Sunday we completed the trifecta of essential Montreal foods, with Montreal bagels for breakfast (they’re quite different from New York bagels, though, of course, still round with a hole in the middle), and smoked meat sandwiches from Schwartz’s for lunch. In between, we drove up Mont Royal, and walked up to the viewing platform at the top.

Oliver looks happy to be back in Canada, even for a short visit

Donald in front of the Montreal skyline

On a science fictional note, Worldcon chairs apparently all get a display copy of that year’s Hugo Award (these are kind of like the Oscars for science fiction and fantasy; though I’m not sure anyone who doesn’t already know this reads my blog). The rocket is always the same, but the base is different each year. As we were packing to leave, Donald glanced at it, displayed on its shelf, and said wistfully, “I want one!”

The way back from Montreal to Boston goes almost right by the Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream factory, so since I happened to be driving at that point, we got to stop. Donald was a little annoyed, and even more annoyed about the 45 minute wait in line for ice-cream. Joining a factory tour was out of the question, unless we wanted to wait an additional hour. Hmm, for some reason, a lot more people are interested in a tour of the Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream factory on the Sunday of a holiday weekend, than a tour of the Tabasco sauce factory on an ordinary Tuesday just after the start of the school year. Can’t figure that one out….

What's not to love?

Thanks again to Rene for his kind hospitality in La Belle Ville!

I’ve gotten behind in blogging about my trip to Louisiana to visit Donald’s parents, back in early September. But I do keep promising to write about our visit to the Tabasco sauce factory.

Apparently, the entire world’s supply of Tabasco sauce is made in Avery Island, Louisiana (although most of the peppers are now grown in Latin America, since the climate is more stable down there). Avery Island is south of Lafayette, in the heart of Cajun country, a couple hours west of New Orleans.

Here are a few fun facts about Tabasco sauce:

1) The queen of England likes it. Or, at least someone in the royal family does. See, here’s proof:

God save the queen!

2) Tabasco sauce is made from one particular kind of pepper that seemed to be some sort of obscure Mexican heirloom variety before the founder of the company was given some plants, and started to make a seasoning sauce out of them, in the 19th century. I always thought it was made from habanero peppers. But it’s not.

Carefully guarded from wandering, pepper-snatching fingers!

3) The Tabasco company (actually, I should say the McIlhenny company) used to make a wide assortment of products, including many canned and pickled vegetables. Although you can still get a few, such as pickled okra, in the company store, most of these products are no longer made. They do, however, make a spicy Tabasco dark chocolate–not as good as some of the gourmet chili-flavored chocolate bars you can get, to be honest, but the tin is really pretty.

4) Tabasco makes 6 sauces: Original, Green (from jalapenos), chipotle, habanero, garlic pepper, and sweet & spicy. Green is a bit milder than original. Garlic pepper is even milder than that. Habanero is much hotter! Chipotle and sweet & spicy are actually less intense, and can be used directly as a steak sauce or dipping sauce. (I bought samples of all of them in the company store, except for original, because I already have some at home, and green, because I see it everywhere in the grocery store.)

5) Habanero Tabasco contains banana! I didn’t realize this before I tasted it, so I like habanero Tabasco. I don’t think you can taste the banana.

I guess there are all sorts of facts about how Tabasco sauce is made and bottled, but honestly, I didn’t find them as interesting as shopping in the company store, and these random factoids I’ve assembled. This is why I’m a blogger instead of a real journalist. Anyway, in case you’re curious, they take the peppers and mash them up with salt, and let the mash age in old whiskey barrels until it’s ready to be strained and mixed with vinegar. The salt they use comes from the Avery Island salt mine, also owned by the McIlhenny family (Tabasco is still a family-run company); Avery Island is the peak of an enormous underground mountain of rock salt that would dwarf Mt Everest if the two were lined up.

Oh, and the peppers are all hand-picked, because they haven’t been able to invent a machine that can tell when they’re properly ripe. The field workers are given a red stick, and they’re supposed to hold that next to the peppers to make sure the colors match before they pick them.

If you go on the tour, they give you a couple of very cute 1/4 oz bottles of Tabasco, one of original and one of green (you can also buy these in the company store; also the tiny bottles of the other flavors). You also get to watch a rather hagiographic 10-minute movie about the McIlhenny family and the founding of the company, but the hairstyles and clothes looked like they were from back in the 90s. Then you walk past a long window through which you can see the bottling plant.

I think my favorite part of the tour was the self-guided visit to the company store, as I’ve already hinted. In addition to the products I’ve already mentioned, I bought a Tabasco apron, because I’m always spilling food on my clothes when I cook. They have free samples of all the sauces, plus Tabasco ice cream!

If you don’t think a visit to the Tabasco company store is worth such a long drive, never fear, there’s also the Jungle Gardens! These are just down the road from the factory. I think they’re also owned by the McIlhenny Company, but I’m not 100% sure (and too lazy to Google it and find out). The Jungle Gardens are sort of an arboretum built up around a migratory bird sanctuary (lots of herons and egrets). And they have alligators!

Do you think they like to be petted?

There were initially only one or two alligators, but as we stood there taking pictures, more kept swimming over

This is the biggest alligator we saw

Donald thought that perhaps his mother and I weren’t taking the alligator threat seriously enough, but really, we were being quite careful, and keeping our distance. And we didn’t poke at them or anything.

For tourists who don't have Donald to remind them

Between Avery Island and Lafayette, they grow a lot of sugarcane. It looks like this:

Sugarcane fields on the way back from Avery Island

Hard to believe that refined white sugar comes out of these plants, isn’t it!

On the drive back, I was playing around with my camera settings a bit, and kept getting Donald to pose for pictures.

Old-fashioned Donald!

Since we were driving right through the heart of Louisiana’s Cajun country, we couldn’t leave without sampling some Cajun specialties. All along the highway, you’ll see signs advertising boudin and cracklins. Boudin is a spicy sausage made of ground pork, rice, and a bit of green pepper. Cracklins are basically fresh pork rinds, without all the preservatives that you’ll find in the ones at the convenience store.

It tastes better than it looks

Yummo, as Rachael Ray would say. Yes, those are indeed deep-fried hunks of lard.

It was a long day, but a very enjoyable trip!

On September 8th, Donald and I went to Natchez, Mississippi for the day. It was nice, but maybe not exciting enough for its own blog post. One of my main reasons for wanting to go was so I could check another state off on my “visited” list. Then on the 9th, Donald and his mother and I went to Baton Rouge, the state capital, where we saw some cool museums. On the 10th, we drove back to Houston, and stayed overnight with a friend of Donald’s from college, and her family (thanks again to Joya for hosting us!). And then on the 11th we flew back to Boston.

Okay, that was a very anti-climactic penultimate paragraph. But this has been a very long post.

This post isn’t entirely about spiders. However, I have to say, if they have spiders like this in Georgia, Kira’s comment about how spiders would keep her away from camping is a lot more understandable. When I talked about big spiders in New Hampshire, they were nothing like this one! Yuck!

Look at the size of that thing!

On Monday (September 6th; i.e., Labor Day), Donald and I went to see Rosedown Plantation, one of the antebellum plantation sites in the area where his parents live (St. Francisville, LA). Many old plantations have been replaced, over the years, by heavy industry–chemical plants and the like, between Baton Rouge and the Mississippi state line. But some of the old properties that have the big houses still standing have been turned into museums, open to the public.

Rosedown is quite beautiful, with extensive gardens. We did get caught in the rain briefly; I noticed that it was very common in Louisiana to have a brief thunderstorm sometime between 2:30 and 4:00 pm, but then it would clear up. (I guess this is only the case during the summer; I don’t remember it happening last time I was in Louisiana, for Thanksgiving.)

A view from the side of the house, sort of sheltered

The house, with live oak trees on either side, Spanish moss hanging down

A view of some of the gardens, from the house

On September 5th, we drove from Houston, Texas to St. Francisville, Louisiana. St. Francisville is about an hour north of Baton Rouge, and I guess about an hour (maybe less?) south of Mississippi. The Mississippi River runs right by it.

The drive was pretty uneventful. We saw a lot of signs for boudin and cracklings (or cracklin’s), going through Cajun country. Boudin is a spicy pork and rice sausage. Cracklings are basically pork rinds, only fresh-cooked, not the preservative-laden ones you get in those little plastic bags. We also saw a lot of signs for “adult superstores.” And those signs that say “Still a Virgin? For Help, Call [X].” No one we know can figure out what those signs are about. What sort of help are they offering? Do they have anything to do with the adult superstores?

I’m getting over a cold, and have to get up early tomorrow, so I’ll write more later. Stay tuned, to read about our exciting tour of the Tabasco sauce factory!

Here’s a cute picture of Donald with the kitten his parents have adopted:

I did warn him that people with cat allergies tend to be most allergic to gray striped cats

On September 2nd, Donald and I flew to Houston to attend my friend Christina’s wedding. The wedding wasn’t until September 4th, but since I was a bridesmaid, I had to be there early enough for the rehearsal dinner, not to mention all the various sorts of primping that being a bridesmaid requires. Hair, makeup, manicures and pedicures … a few years ago I might have been horrified, but I’ve become much more girly in recent years, and actually own makeup these days. So I actually sort of enjoyed the whole process.

Christina is a friend from grad school, back at the University of British Columbia. We weren’t in the same program–she was doing a PhD in geology, I was doing an MSc in chemistry–but we got to know each other through the graduate Christian fellowship group we both attended (Dwight and Kate, other good friends from the GCF group, were also at the wedding, along with their respective spouses). That was a kind of a long time ago–I left Vancouver in 1998–but we’ve kept in touch since then, visiting each other, and calling occasionally.

The wedding was very beautiful, and quite large. There were about 400 guests. The wedding ceremony was at the West Houston Chinese Church, which Christina attended, and the reception at the Ocean Palace Chinese Restaurant, where we were treated to a delicious 10-course banquet. I’m not sure if I can remember all the courses … there was an assorted cold cut platter (including jellyfish!), shark fin and chicken soup, fried prawns in a sweet honey sauce with honeyed walnuts, Peking duck, a beef dish, assorted mushrooms with Chinese vegetables, lobster, noodles … hmm, okay, I might be missing a course. Not to mention wedding cake. Everything was wonderful! Christina looked beautiful in her dress, too. (I’d post a picture, but I’m not sure Christina wants pictures of herself splashed across the internet.) Christina and her husband Jerry actually had 4 outfits over the course of the evening, during the reception. First they wore typical North American wedding attire. Then they changed into traditional Chinese formal outfits. Then Korean (Jerry is Korean-American). Then evening wear. They both looked great! But you’ll just have to imagine it.

Like I said, there was a lot of primping involved in getting ready for the wedding. I had my first ever manicure and pedicure. I’m not sure I would get manicures on a regular basis. The nail polish was pretty badly chipped within a week, and I was on vacation that whole time, and not really doing much with my hands. I can’t imagine that this would work with my usual routine, which involves a lot of cooking. Not unless I want to be ingesting a lot of chips of polish that flake off as I’m chopping. The pedicure, on the other hand, I’m still undecided about, at least for summer. I usually paint my toenails anyway during the summer, because they look so disgusting otherwise (I won’t gross you out by going into too much detail about my foot fungus). But I end up having to remove the polish and repaint every week, because it chips and flakes so much. And, although it’s been a week and a half since I got the pedicure, my toenails are still looking pretty decent. Better than they look a week after polishing them myself. So I’ll see how long it lasts.

As for the makeup, although I do often wear makeup these days, I’ve never worn anything like the high-test industrial-grade stuff they applied at the salon! They sprayed on the foundation and blush with this little sprayer thing. And I’ve never had my eyelashes curled before. (“I’m going to go with a nice, natural look,” the lady said, before she started.)

All this makeup, and they still couldn't hide the zits on my forehead!

It actually looks much closer to “natural” in the photographs than it did in real life. I guess that’s why they did it that way, for the official wedding photographs, so I didn’t look washed out. But I still think they could have toned it down a little.

Here’s a picture of me and Donald:

This is the only picture in which one of us is not making a silly face, or looking like they want to escape from the other

On Sunday, after attending the English-language service at the West Houston Chinese Church, and sharing a lunch with Christina and Jerry, their families, and other out-of-town wedding guests, Donald and I headed east on I-10 for Louisiana, for the next stage in our adventure.

I’ve been lax in blogging for a while, so I have a lot to catch up on. It would take a ridiculously long time to write about everything I’ve been up to in the last few weeks (which, sadly, hasn’t included much writing), and I’m not sure even my mom is sufficiently interested in my life to read the ridiculously long post that would result. So, a little at a time.

The last weekend in August, Donald and I went backpacking in the New Hampshire White Mountains. Backpacking being distinct from car camping, of course, in that you have to carry everything you need to a campsite in the woods, instead of being able to just drive up to one and pitch your tent. I used to go backpacking quite a lot, but I think this was the first time I’d gone in almost 5 years. Donald hadn’t gone since he was a Boy Scout, so he had to rent a backpack, sleeping bag, and camping mattress. Which made it a more expensive trip than you might think. Especially since, despite his Y chromosome, he wasn’t able to resist the lure of impulse shopping at REI when he picked up the equipment, and ended up with some new hiking clothes as well (in which he looks very cute, I might add).

We decided to use the Nauman tent platforms, next to the Mizpah Spring hut, as our base of operations for the weekend. This is just a little southwest of Mt Washington, the tallest peak in New Hampshire. It’s actually just a little below a ridge of mountains that extends south from Washington: Monroe, Eisenhower, Pierce and Jackson–known as the Southern Presidentials. The western slope of this ridge goes down to Crawford Notch, one of the main north-south routes for cars and trucks through the White Mountains; the eastern slope descends steeply into the Dry River valley. We chose Nauman tentsite because it was less than a 3-hour hike from the parking lot, but also reasonably close to some interesting hiking. We figured we could hike up to the tentsite on Friday, sleep there on Friday night, then leave the bulk of our equipment at the tentsite on Saturday while we did a hike up along the aforementioned Southern Presidentials. Sunday we could hike back out, and drive back to Boston.

We left quite early on Friday morning, and it was a good thing, because when we got to the parking lot around 10:30 or so, it was already pretty full. Nonetheless, we found a spot along the edge, shouldered our packs, and started uphill.

I firmly believe that anyone who plans to write epic fantasy novels that include long treks through the wilderness needs to go backpacking a few times, in order to begin to understand what it’s like to have to carry everything you need on your back. And then imagine doing it without waterproof-breathable clothing, or high-tech lightweight gear. Or ziploc bags. For fantasy writing research, it’s actually best, in fact, to go backpacking in the rain. Fortunately, we didn’t have the chance to carry out that level of research on this trip!

We reached the Nauman tentsite early that afternoon, and again, it was a good thing we left as early as we did from Boston. We had no trouble finding a platform, but I think they just about filled up that night, and on Saturday night they had to put hikers in the overflow area.

Nauman was a pretty good place to camp. Since it’s next to a hut, we didn’t actually need the water purifier we’d brought, and could get free, purified water from inside the hut. They have an outhouse, so you don’t have to dig little holes in the woods. And they have sturdy metal boxes to put your food in, to keep the bears away (we didn’t see any bears at all that weekend, though we did see a mouse hanging around the food storage area). They charge $8 per person per night, and there’s a caretaker to keep an eye on things, and maintain the composting toilet (which he said is the worst job on the planet).

I always shy away from the expensive bags of camping food you can buy at REI or similar stores, and just bring food from the regular grocery store. On Friday night, we had steak, accompanied by couscous and cherry tomatoes. All the other campers were very jealous of our steak, as they smelled it cooking. It might seem like a bad idea to bring raw meat where there’s no refrigeration, but if you freeze the steak overnight before you leave, it will be just thawed after spending the day in your backpack. It’s probably only a good idea to do this for the first night of the trip, though. Also, it is kind of messy, because you want to do a good job of wiping up any raw meat juice (also known as blood) that might spill out and attract bears, and of course you have to make sure the meat is wrapped well in several layers of plastic…. Anyway, it is tasty, and a good way to make everyone else who’s eating those expensive bags of mediocre backpacking food very jealous.

Saturday morning, we set off for our hike. It wasn’t very hot, the skies were clear, and it promised to be a lovely day for hiking. We still took plenty of warm clothing though, just in case. It’s always a good idea, when planning to hike above treeline in New Hampshire, to be prepared for anything from 80 degrees Fahrenheit, to a blizzard. Even in the summer. Hypothermia is one of the leading causes of death among hikers in this region (the other is being struck by lightning).

Nauman is just below the ridge between Mts Pierce and Jackson, so our plan was to hike up to the ridge, then head north over Pierce, Eisenhower and Monroe, enjoying the great views. Then back.

The view south from Mt Pierce

Here’s a picture from the top of Mt Pierce, looking south towards Mt Jackson and beyond. As you can see, it still looks like a great day for hiking. However, looking north, as the elevations of the mountains we were planning to hike over got higher, there was a lot more cloud cover than we’d expected.

That's not a silly grin on my face, I'm gritting my teeth against the cold wind!

By the time we got to Eisenhower, it was so cold and cloudy (and windy!) that we even wondered whether it would be safe to continue. But the weather forecast wasn’t calling for rain, so thunderstorms seemed unlikely. (Donald was able to get cell phone reception on the top of Eisenhower, so we could check the forecast on his iPhone. Ah, wilderness!)

Panoramic views from the summit of Mt Eisenhower

After a snack, and enjoying the panoramic views from the summit of Mt Eisenhower (ie, staring into the interior of a thick gray cloud), we started off for Monroe. And that mountain kicked our butts! The thing about going from Eisenhower to Monroe is that there’s this one really steep section that you think is the last ascent to the summit. Then you get to the top of that, and you see a LONG stretch of path ahead of you and, quite far in the distance, the actual summit of Monroe. (The false summit is called Mt Franklin, but it doesn’t really count as one of NH’s 4000-foot peaks, because it’s not at least “200 ft. above the low point of its connecting ridge with a higher neighbor.”) Not only that, Monroe is a double mountain, so there are two peaks you have to climb over in order to actually have summitted the mountain.

From the top of the second (and higher) peak of Monroe, you can finally see Lakes of the Clouds hut, just below the summit of Mt Washington. When we got there, the clouds had finally lifted from Monroe and most of the ridge, but the top of Washington was still shrouded. However, just after turning around to go back to our tentsite (after a potty break down at the hut), we looked back, and saw that the last of the clouds were finally melting away.

The last of the clouds lifting from the summit of Mt Washington

Fortunately, on the return trip, we didn’t need to climb over Monroe and Eisenhower again, though we did need to go back up and over Pierce (and Franklin, for that matter). The entire hike for Saturday was 9 1/2 miles, and it took us 8 1/2 hours (including breaks). 5 1/2 hours there, and 3 hours back.

Here’s a picture, looking back along the ridge from Mt Pierce, all the way to Washington (which we did NOT attempt to climb that day).

A look back at what we've accomplished

The sense of accomplishment I feel in looking at this picture is, unfortunately, somewhat diminished by the fact that the tentsite caretaker can make the trip that took us 5 1/2 hours in 1 1/2. Hmm. Well, neither Donald nor I claims to be in the best shape these days….

We were pretty glad to see this sight.

Our campsite, back at the Nauman tent platforms

I actually overexerted myself during the hike. I was having a lot of trouble, earlier in the day, with my hat, because the shorter layers of my hair aren’t long enough to stay in a ponytail or braid, and they kept coming loose and sticking against my face or neck. So eventually I just took my hat off so I could wear my hair in a high ponytail on top of my head, which worked better. Unfortunately, this was on the way back, and it was quite sunny and hot by then. Also, right at the end, I kind of had to pee, but it would have been really inconvenient to get into the woods on either side of the trail, and we were pretty close to the campsite, so I just decided to wait, but I didn’t want to drink any more water, or I wouldn’t have been able to wait … well, I should know this by now, but deciding not to drink water when you’re exercising hard is never a good idea, if you’re thirsty. Also, I’ve been drinking coffee pretty regularly, and hadn’t had any caffeine that day. In any event, by the time we were cooking dinner, I felt quite ill, and had a terrible, splitting headache. Also I was sore, and had twisted something in my left ankle. And my right knee. I managed to cook dinner (I’d brought some boil-in-the-bag Indian food, curried chickpeas and saag paneer, along with a Pringles-like can of poppadums), but I kept feeling worse and worse, so Donald kindly offered to clean up the dishes for me so I could just rest and get ready for bed. (And no, I wasn’t pretending to be sick to get out of cleaning duty!)

Thankfully, I felt much better in the morning. Though my ankle still hurt. But we both managed the (relatively) short hike back down to our car. We were moving more slowly though; it took us as long going down as it had going up on Friday, when we were fresh and energetic.

It was quite an enjoyable trip, despite all the pain and suffering! I thought the spectacular views made it all worthwhile. Though I’m not sure Donald is 100% convinced on this point. On the way down, we ran into a woman who was going camping with her two children. She told us that her husband had no interest in going. Later, I asked Donald if that was going to be me and our children in the future. He laughed, then said, “I’ll go sometimes.”

Another exciting thing about the trip is that I found lots of yummy edible mushrooms! Only one chanterelle, but lots of hedgehogs, and lots of winter chanterelles (I didn’t pick as many of these, though, because I wasn’t 100% sure of them at first; I put them in a separate bag and then confirmed their identity with my mushroom book once we were home). Donald thought the mushrooms were tasty, too; though he wouldn’t eat them until I had shown him pictures in the edible mushroom book that looked exactly like the mushrooms I had picked, and he had read the descriptions himself to be sure that there were no poisonous look-alikes. But he agreed that they were much better than ordinary white mushrooms from the grocery store.

So, that was our New Hampshire trip! Over the next few days, I’ll write about our trip to Texas and Lousiana (which we just got back from).

Donald and I went camping in the New Hampshire White Mountains this past weekend. I took Friday off, and we drove up early Friday afternoon to avoid most of the weekend getting-out-of-town traffic.

We stayed at the Waterville Campground, just around the corner from the Waterville Valley ski resort. It was pretty quiet there, though that may have been partly because it was a slightly rainy weekend. Or maybe because it’s a small campground without a lot of luxuries. Like showers, or flush toilets.

We had a very late lunch on Friday on the drive up (at the Common Man restaurant in Ashland; we both agreed that of the two free cheese dips, we like the cream cheese dip better than the cottage cheese dip, and that their homemade root beer isn’t as good as the homemade root beer at the Woodstock Inn). So we sort of skipped dinner, and just ate occasional snacks through the evening. I wanted to toast marshmallows, but we were having trouble getting a fire going, with damp wood, and rain starting to fall. Eventually we cheated by dousing the wood with some of the white gas fuel for my camp stove. Oops! Too much fuel. Don’t try this at home, kids! No harm done, though, and the gas kickstart did get the damp wood burning long enough for me to toast 3 or 4 marshmallows. Donald passed on the marshmallows; he said that he enjoys toasting them (with a better fire), but doesn’t enjoy having to eat them afterwards. It’s kind of funny that I’m way more of a food snob than Donald, but I love marshmallows!

We went to bed early, since it was dark and there wasn’t much else to do. On Saturday morning, we were up bright and early for a hike. Well, we were both up for our own definitions of bright and early. I got up at 7, ate some fruit, granola bars and nuts (and a marshmallow or two!), and read my new books on edible wild mushrooms and edible wild plants until Donald finally got up around 9.

Once we were both ready, we drove another hour north to hike Mount Garfield. Donald had forgotten his hiking boots at home, unfortunately, but a good part of the hike up Mount Garfield is easy going; though there’s some steep scrambling right at the end.

Here are some pictures from the top of the mountain:

The view from the top of Mt Garfield

More of the view

I kept trying to get a picture of Donald, so I would get his attention, and he would look at me just until I had focused the camera and then look away before I snapped the picture. This is about the fourth or fifth time I’d made him look at the camera, which is why he looks so irritated.

Don't you already have enough pictures of me?

I’m incapable of not making a stupid face when a camera is pointed at me.

Bad picture of me

Sleepyhead!

I didn’t want to sit right at the top of the mountain, because some darkly threatening clouds were moving in, and I didn’t want to be at the highest point for hundreds of yards in any direction. Donald thought I was being excessively paranoid, but he hasn’t been caught on top of Mount Monadnock in a sudden, vicious thunderstorm. Not fun! So we sat for a while on one of the ledges a short distance below the actual summit.

Hmm ... are those cumulonimbus? (or is it cumulonimbi?)

I also got a nice picture of Donald without his shirt, back at the car, but he said that if I put it on my blog, he had a nice picture of me in my bikini, showing a considerable amount of cleavage, that he’d be happy to post on his own blog. So I thought better of it!

The hike was 9 1/2 or 10 miles, round-trip. The hiking book said it would take 5 1/2 hours, and while I used to be able to beat the book time pretty consistently, I’m not in my 20s anymore. Our total time was around 7 hours, but that included a half hour break at the summit, and several short breaks during the hike, especially on the way up. Also, Donald can hike faster than I can uphill, but I’m faster downhill, so if we hike together we’re probably slower than if we hiked separately. But that wouldn’t be very romantic, now, would it?

It didn’t rain on us on the way down the mountain, but it did rain pretty hard while we were eating dinner at a restaurant between the trailhead and our campsite (the aforementioned Woodstock Inn, of the excellent root beer, and even more excellent–in my opinion–actual beer). We both felt it was too much effort to actually plan ahead for meals, so we just ate out (and bought stuff at a local grocery store for snacks). The Woodstock Inn has good food, but their portions are enormous. Rachael Ray size! I ordered the potato skins and a salad, and I really should have ordered a half order of potato skins, because it was just enormous. They were really good, though. A lot of places think potato skins are 5 neat shells of roasted potato half with a bit of cheese and a few bacon sprinkles; these were actual skins with a lot of potato flesh still attached, deep-fried, then thrown into a dish and smothered with melted cheese and bacon crumbles. Oh, and they actually gave us a reasonable amount of sour cream, too. Donald was all sensible and ordered the swordfish. But he passed on his vegetable accompaniment to eat some of my potato skins (potato is a vegetable, right?).

It wasn’t raining too terribly hard on our walk back to the car (the Woodstock Inn is very popular, so we couldn’t find parking right next to the restaurant). It didn’t start raining hard again until around 1 am, by which time we were both safely ensconced in the tent.

Other interesting things from the weekend: I tried this DEET-free insect repellent that I got at a local store; it contains cedar, mint and citronella oils in a base of corn oil. It was supposed to be really good against black flies. I think it worked okay, but I’m not entirely sold. I don’t think it lasts as long as DEET-containing repellents, and it’s kind of messy to be slathering corn oil on yourself constantly. It doesn’t taste as bad as DEET, though, so it doesn’t interfere as much with eating, and it’s not as disgusting if you’re sweating a lot and some drips into your mouth. I’m not convinced it would do the job in really heavy mosquitoes, though.

Slugs seemed to really like our sandals. We would leave them outside the tent at night, and in the morning they would be covered with slugs. It was kind of gross. But not as bad as the large spiders in the outhouse.

We left late Sunday morning, and got back to Boston early in afternoon. It was a good trip! Next time we go camping, we might try backpacking. I guess we’ll have to be better organized; no hiking out of the wilderness to the Woodstock Inn for dinner, I suspect!