a trail to self discovery...

  "Solo travel not only pushes you out of your comfort zone, it also pushes you out of the zone of others' expectations." Monday morning I last minute booked myself a campsite at the ADK Loj for Tuesday- Thursday. I knew I needed to hike Big Slide & Giant still to catch up to Laura so we can finish at the same time. So this felt like a good opportunity. Just a few days prior I unexpectedly had to bury my brother. After losing my mother just over a year ago, losing my brother was just beyond overwhelming. Not in a million years did I think I would be back at the cemetery where my mother was laid to rest, standing next to her, and now laying my brother down to his final resting place.  I would wake up Tuesday morning, take Ricky Bobby to the vet for his shots, then head directly to my weekly therapy session. From there I would hit the road to New York for a few days. Solo. I have never just left by myself to go anywhere to camp. I always spend my time in the wilderness ...

  "A friend is someone who makes it easy to believe in yourself." Oh, the dreaded Seward Range we had heard so much about. Laura and I had planned a long weekend and decided lets go for this Range. We decided it would be best done in a backpacking trip. On my birthday we last minute invited Mik along, she got the days off and tagged along for her first overnight trip and first time hiking in the Adirondacks. We hoped we wouldn't break her. :) We all met at Lauras house on Friday evening to take off early Friday for our 6 hour drive over. We would arrive at the trailhead around noon. We then threw our heavy ass packs on and hit the trail for camp. We hiked in just under 2 miles to the designated camp where we would share the space with others who were already there. At least, for our first night in the wilderness. We set up camp, ate a snack, put all of our food in our bear canister and hit the trail with our trail running vests for Seymour. We brought our headlamps as we ...

  "Nothing perhaps affects man's character more than the company he keeps." Last minute plans came about to backpack on Whiteface and Passaconaway mid week. Daniel still needed these two peaks for his 48 finish, and I very badly needed to escape and sleep in the woods. I knew of a stealth spot just off the summit of Whiteface so the plan was to start later and head up for the night. We both met at the trailhead by 3:15pm. We took our time and our two dogs and headed up the 3.8 mile trail to the outlook of Whiteface. We went via Blueberry ledge Trail as he had never done this hike before, I felt it would be a fun one! We made it to the outlook at roughly 6:00pm. Unfortunately to find a very large group of campers with 3 tents all on the outlook. We continued a little bit to the stealth spot I knew of and sure enough no one was there, even though this spot is large enough for several tents. Once camp was set up we took a walk over to the outlook to see if we could see the s...