Nelson County Rocks

 

In the period following Monika’s death on January 17, 2014, I found it therapeutic to post several picture albums on Facebook.  I’ve now also posted these sets of pictures (with a few additions) to Picasa as well.   They bring back many happy memories for me, even if they inevitably remind me of the great loss I’ve experienced and am still trying to come to terms with.

Monika Wood (1947-2014): family pictures over the years  Facebook    Picasa

Graceful Moni: Grace Church and local community   Facebook    Picasa

Valentine’s Day: Remembering our trip to Mykonos and Santorini in 2007   Facebook   Picasa

     

Monika and I decided to seize the moment and take a trip to the Outer Banks in North Carolina, which neither of us had ever been to.  The weather in this first week of October proved to be perfect: sunny, warm and clear.  We spent two nights in Kill Devil Hills (so named for the rum that washed up from shipwrecks in the old days–said to be so awful it would kill the devil), and two nights at Cape Hatteras, with side trips to Roanoke Island (by bridge) and Ocracoke Island (by ferry).  Each day started with a perfect sunrise from our respective ocean front rooms, and I apologize for an excess of sunrise pictures in the album below, even after my draconian editing.  Those sunrises were breathtaking! In addition to a variety of sea birds, Monika spotted from our balcony a fox in the dunes, and with the help of binoculars even located its foxhole.  Neat!

The only downside of the trip was the closure of many national seashore sites due to the Tea Party/Republican-engineered government shutdown, which included most lighthouses.  And evidence of a related sort of shortsightedness was evident at our Cape Hatteras Motel, which showed major hurricane damage to structures built right on the beach.

click here for trip photo album

In early June we spent a four-day weekend with Dave, Sue, Paityn and Cody on their horse farm.  We had a great time. Moni has organized our pictures into the three categories illustrated above: grandkids, horse farm, and deppen family history.  Click on the relevant picture for each.

 

We had a lovely Easter with Nic and Alison.  Then, with a buffet full of cards expressing the quite extraordinary love and caring of friends and family, we headed up to Johns Hopkins University Hospital for follow-up appointments with Monika’s surgeon and oncologist.  A friend convinced us to break up the trip with a romantic interlude, and we did that at the Mimslyn Inn in Luray, a quite elegant old-style hotel which provided a nice break and raised our spirits.

 

The news at Johns Hopkins was encouraging.  We spent one night with Tim and Megan, who had a pretty full house with Megan’s sister Sharon, her husband Ben, and their two delightful children, Evie and Nora.

 

We stayed with John and family on the way back (but failed to take pictures.)

Reminder: all pictures on this blog may be clicked on for a larger one

Biking the Blue Ridge Railway trail along the Piney and Tye Rivers

Meeting my former Harvard roommate Joe Persky (and his son Dan)
at Big Meadows, Shenandoah National Park

 

Hiking along the James River Heritage Trail from Lynchburg across Percival Island and over to the Amherst County side of the river and back.

Revisiting outlooks over Rockfish Valley along Blue Ridge Parkway and I-64 that helped convince us to move here.

This post will mix reminiscences about three traverse attempts across the Presidential Range of New Hampshire’s White Mountains: a winter traverse with the Harvard Mountaineering Club way back in January 1963; a planned June 2007 traverse with five family members which an ill-timed accident prevented me from participating in; and the backpacking trip last week with my two sons Nic and Tim and their wives Alison and Megan.  Each of these trips was interrupted by Mt. Washington’s famously bad weather, but with my climb over Mt. Pierce and up Mt. Madison with Nic (pictured above with Mt. Adams in the background), I finally completed the ascent of all the “president” Presidentials.

Origins

It seems almost insane in retrospect, but as a Harvard freshman with some hiking but no real mountaineering experience, I participated in what was then a Harvard Mountaineering Club (HMC) tradition: a winter traverse of the Presidential range at the end of January, in the break between semesters.  My memories are a bit hazy, but I know that we hiked up to a cabin quite high on the side of Mt. Adams on the first day, and then continued, with snowshoes and crampons, the next day over the summits of Adams, Jefferson and Clay to the side of Mt. Washington, where we pitched tents outside the (boarded up) Lake of the Clouds AMC hut.  I believe that we hiked up late that afternoon to the weather observatory on the summit of Mt. Washington, where the meteorologists, unused to visitors that time of year, invited us in for a short visit.  It was a cold night back in our tents!  The next day we continued on over the various summits to what was then called Mt. Pleasant (later renamed Mt. Eisenhower).  Here we ran into a ferocious snow storm with very high winds, and we were literally blown off the mountain, making an unplanned descent of its eastern side.  My main memory of that descent is crossing a field of young conifers on my snowshoes, and falling through the snow into the air pockets created by branches under the snow, getting the snowshoes tangled up in the branches.  But somehow we made it through and out.

The 2007 Expedition

As noted above, I did not get to go on the 2007 hike, but it too was interrupted by bad weather.  Having climbed the Mt. Webster-Jackson trail out of Crawford Notch, going over Mts. Webster and Jackson and staying at Mizpah Hut the first night, the group (Cally, Sylvia, Nic, Alison and Justin, along with Lee Spiller who took the picture above) had beautiful weather for the stretch along the AT onward to Lake of the Clouds Hut.  But the next day (in June!) brought freezing temperatures, snow and sleet, and a decision was made to come down the trail that ends up at the cog railway station, not risking the very exposed route over the northern Presidentials to the Madison Spring Hut.

click here for a YouTube video of their second day

2012: A Detour and a Completion

This past week, our party of five followed the Crawford Path from Crawford Notch up to Mizpah Spring Hut and the AT, where we spent our first night.  The next day, which started in the fog but cleared up nicely, we continued over Mts. Pierce, Eisenhower and Monroe and then on to  Lake of the Clouds Hut, where we spent the night.  Since Alison has led tours at President Monroe’s home, Ashlawn, climbing Mt. Monroe (5372′) was a special moment, and she was pleased that Mt. Monroe, with its two peaks, compares very well to the other southern Presidentials.

The next morning we hiked up to the summit of Mt. Washington, the highest mountain (6288′) in the U.S. northeast.  The weather worsened at the summit, however, and after waiting two hours to see if it would get better (it didn’t), we reluctantly arranged to take a van down to our car at Pinkham Notch.  We then drove around to the Valley Trail up to Madison Spring Hut (seeing a mother moose and her calf along the way).  Coming on top of our climb up Mt. Washington in the morning, the hike up the Valley Trail proved to be an exhausting one (with a 3500 feet elevation increase), but we all made it while dinner at the hut was still in progress.  In the morning, Nic and I climbed Mt. Madison, which along with Mt. Pierce, belatedly completed for me the Presidentials that the Harvard Mountaineering Club traverse had not covered.  The weather partly cleared at the top, giving us beautiful views of the clouds below and the summit of nearby Mt. Adams.  We all hiked out later in the afternoon and headed to my sister Eleanor’s place in the Catskills.  Overall, a great trip, and my thanks to Nic and Tim for conceiving and organizing it.

click here for more pictures of the 2012 trip

click here to learn more about the AMC huts

   

 

Over Memorial Day weekend, Monika and I got to see all our kids and their respective wives and families in a single circuit from home, starting with the arrival on Friday of Nic and Alison along with two friends to take care of our chickens.  Early Saturday we drove to Tim and Megan in Maryland, then on to Dan and Gina in New Jersey.  Sunday we continued on to Dave and Sue and Paityn and Cody in upstate Pennsylvania, and then to John and Calista and Cally and Sylvia in the Washington area.  Traffic miraculously was not bad at all, and we got to see the new homes of Tim and Megan and of Dan and Gina.  It took 815 miles to see the family, with great visiting, catching up, celebrating (Tim and Megan’s official Ph.D’s, Sylvia’s track triumphs, Alison’s job renewal, and more) and, of course, eating along the way.  Back home, Nic and Alison did a great job of chicken-sitting (pictures courtesy of their Facebook posting):

  

Click here for family pictures  along the way (with particular focus on the two newest family members, Paityn and Cody)

  
Moni and our Christmas tree at home

Nic and Alison stopped by on their way north before Christmas, and we had dinner at the recently-opened restaurant of the Wild Wolf Brewery, which, while having the best food of the three Nelson County breweries, didn’t quite meet expectations.  Still, we had a good time (and the beer remains great) and we plan to go back when the beer garden opens up in warmer weather.  Tim and Megan also stopped by on their way back from Lynchburg after Christmas.

 

In between, Monika and I drove up to John and family in Maryland, crossing the Potomac via White’s Ferry, and spending a delightful Christmas Eve and Christmas with John, Calista, Cally, Sylvia and Hazel (dog).  While we went lightly on presents, they thoughtfully gave us a dehydrator, which we’ve already put to work drying apple slices, with delicious results.  More dehydrating reports sure to follow.

click here for more pictures of Christmas in Maryland

We’d been anticipating this trip for some time, and with the weather forecast looking propitious on October 5th, we loaded up the car and took off.  We drove down I-81 to Asheville, North Carolina the first day, getting more than our fill of superhighways and trucks. The next day we headed east to the Blue Ridge Parkway, and then worked our way down to its southern terminus at Cherokee, located at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where we walked around the interesting farm museum by the Oconaluftee Visitor Center. We spent the following day exploring the Park, traversing the park on Newfound Gap Road, viewing the excellent movie and nature museum at the Sugarlands Visitor Center, exploring early settler history at Cades Cove, and pausing on the way back to Cherokee to watch a sunset from Morton’s Overlook. The next morning we visited the  innovative Museum of the Cherokee Indian, and then headed back up the Blue Ridge Parkway to the Pisgah Inn, where we’d stopped and made a reservation on our way down. The Inn is beautifully situated on top of a ridge, with classic layered Blue Ridge views. Both the sunset and the sunrise the next morning were spectacular. Day 5 we headed back north up the Parkway, stopping at the Folk Arts Center and taking a side trip to the top of Mount Mitchell, the highest mountain in the East, and then on to southern Virginia, where we spent our final night. We took our time on our final stretch home, exploring the area west of I-81, and were delighted to stumble across Hungry Mother State Park, a lovely place.  The weather was consistently sunny and clear  (although in the chilly 30’s when we woke up in Asheville) and we had a wonderful time.

Click here for more pictures