Baxter in the Autumn

Oct. 4,5, 6

 I took Friday off to pack for Baxter. It was a reservation from 6 months ago and Judd is now, not here to help.  I had to put the ice chest in the back of the truck empty and carry loads of food to the truck bed (because I could not lift the ice chest into the truck full.) As recommended, my kitchen Rubbermaid Box matched my dry good Rubbermaid box and my extra-drinks Rubbermaid box so they would stack in the truck bed.  I had arranged to pick up Kelcy at his apartment at 2:30 and Ryley at his dorm at 3:00. Everyone was ready for me. We made it to Kidney Pond before the sun went down.   We drove over miles of the dirt Tote Road, red carpeted with leaves, orange and yellow canopy overhead. The check-in Ranger at Kidney Pond( Dean) said he’d be around til 8pm in case we had any questions (or just wanted to visit.) We didn’t really want to visit.  We wanted to cook our steak strips and sautéed onions/mushrooms before it got dark. Thank you Omer for the 2 burner Coleman. Stove.  I know how to turn that on. The boys were sweet to build a fire in the cabin stove so it would be warm at dinner time. The hot chocolate I brought in double envelopes was actually half hot chocolate and half freeze-dried marshmallows so we ran out early in the weekend. We had to warm up Arnold Palmer Iced Tea and turn it into hot lemon tea. I also had all the Judd-on-the-AT-rejected-Starbucks instant coffee. It was fine with the organic ½ and ½ I brought.`

Both boys were in various stages of a rhinovirus and weren’t sure they’d be up for hiking in the morning. We decided we didn’t need to be in a morning-hurry.

Saturday

We woke up leisurely around 8:30 and had bacon and eggs breakfast and packed three day-packs with sandwiches and gorp.  We could literally walk from the car to the trail head of Sentinel Mountain in .5 miles and that seemed easier than moving any cars for a harder hike. We were the first to register and were alone most of the hike. We saw many toads, and amazing mushrooms.  Kelcy called the white mushrooms, “angel wings” and the rest of the fungi looked like toad stools  (both toad poop-y looking and toad sit-up-on-looking.)    I did scream once and the boys didn’t know what I ‘d discovered, but they were sure impressed when it was a pretty long snake, side-winding down the path.  We sought trail names for each other: Kelcy had forgotten his hiking boots and I said he could walk in sneakers.  He said, he hadn’t brought sneakers, he had Birkenstocks.  I said Pat Harrison, a Peace Corps friend,  had hiked Mt. Kenya in Birkenstocks and she had.  Kelcy was up for the challenge.  We named him Big “Bootless” Foot. Ryley was training his OiS 7-phone  Siri in Spanish so someone named him “Swimming with Spaniards.”   I said I wanted my name to have Princess and Chipmunk in my name.  One of the boys said the trail name should include an adjective/adverb, an animal, and a body part.  One choice was Princess Chipmunk Turd. I pointed out turd was not a body part.  Other suggestions were Goat Princess or “It’s a Snake”-yeller. No one decided.

We ended up requiring several stops for tissues. I finally made myself a snot scarf – I had brought a scarf in case it was cold—it wasn’t THAT cold.   So, the scarf ended up like one of those “endless” towels in public restrooms, that you pull down for a clean spot…. I just needed to remember to not use the same  4 inches  of scarf twice…

At the top of Sentinel, there’s a small loop around the top for views in every direction.  We tried to find the most comfortable, best view for our lunch. We did end up seeing a couple other humans.  Up high, we had nanoseconds of  cell service and could blast out some FB and Instagram pics.  We were back at camp by 2:00 and happily relaxing on our own porch. We explored the library with it’s many books, board (or “bored” ) games and an odd bowling ball collection. We opted NOT to canoe or kayak.  The boys played horseshoes a bit.  We never figured out the real name of the “Bear Claw Mountain” we witnessed from Kidney Pond.

 Animals sighted:

Squirrels, loads

one fearless chipmunk

2 toads

1 snake

Spontaneous comments:

“look at the moss”

"look at the view"

"look at the leaves"   

Geography quiz at the peak :

where’s Kidney Pond?     point there

where’s Daicy Pond?      point there

Where’s Sentinel  Peak?–  epic fail !!!!….. as Kelcy looked around for it.  “ We’re standing on it!”

After noodles and “salad in a bag,” we warmed apple-raspberry pie on the top of the indoor wood stove.I taught the boys my remembrance of Judd’s parents’ couples card game:  “Up the river- down the river”  and we had a good time with our own version…. Ryley, laying Kelcy and I in the dust….

I loved all the slapstick humor of the weekend:  when Ryley asked if we had Twizzlers, I passed him the bag and said “knock yourself out”  and he hit himself in the forehead with the bag of licorice.

Sunday

We all slept in as long as we wanted.  I got up by 8:00 to a brilliant, bright sunrise in the front window.  It was still cold enough in the little cabin that I could build a fire in the wood stove and read my book with my “hobo gloves.”  (This is what Kelcy called my partial gloves/mitten tops.)  The boys were up by 9:00, tired of not-sleeping-well on the camp mattresses that squeaked every time you rolled over or got up to blow your nose. We opted to have pie/granola breakfast and to NOT make bacon and pancakes to dirt-ify all the dishes before packing up.  The boys lugged all the gear out to the truck while I swept and we were on the road by 10:21.  Good thing ,  because it turned out, both boys had Sunday homework. I was back in China by 2:30 and all unpacked, doing laundry.