Day 115: Roadtrip

Hiked 0.0 miles, camping in Tripoli park in New Hampshire.

Did you just do a double take when you read that?  No I did not magically teleport ahead 200 miles.  Srocket and her friends do an annual river float and so the two of us took a vacation from camping to go camping.  The original plan was to get picked up in Lee by Srocket's mom but we managed to twist Hotdog's arm into joining us on our excursion so she drove us up there.

After breakfast with my parents I said farewell to them along with Why Not and Obie who headed back out on the trail today.  Hopefully they don't move too fast and we can catch them again after our vacation.  Thanks again to my parents for the awesome trail magic and for coming out to see me, it was a lot of fun.

We left in the afternoon after doing laundry and getting to the library.  We had a grand old time during the drive.  The best part of taking a roadtrip with two ladies?  Getting to listen to such classics as Call Me Maybe and Mmm-bop.  

It was a great day to not be hiking, the temperatures outside soared to the high 90s.  When we got to the campground the first thing we all did was to go swimming.  At Tripoli campground there is a large pond that is perfect for swimming.  The bottom is mostly sandy and it is very deep. If you hike a quarter mile around the pond you get to a rope swing and this became our destination.  The rope swing required some work to get to as you had to climb about ten feet up a tree, but it was worth it.  

I decided I didn't want to hike back so I swam it instead.  Hotdog very graciously carried my shoes back for me so that I could do so.  It felt great to be swimming for real again, I even did a little butterfly, but it also demonstrated my loss of upper body mass over the last few months.  I'm going to have my work cut out for me when I get back from this and get back in the pool to start training again.

The evening was spent at the campground.  Srocket's friends got a large campsite there and we had probably 25 people there tonight.  The party continued there until well into the morning.  It was a really fun group and a large chunk of the evening was spent sitting around the campfire with people playing music and singing.  I made it till 3am which is really impressive considering as a thru hiker 9 pm is my normal bedtime.

PS:  I apologize but I got basically no good pictures from this weekend so the next couple of posts are not very visually stimulating.  Sorry guys.