Friday was the day that everyone on the news was all, "Don't wait until the last minute. Today is the day to prepare! Get your boats out of the water, bring all your outdoor furniture inside..." Guess what we did on Friday? If you thought we prepared for Irene on Friday, you're incorrect. Nope, we just hiked Mount Wachuset that day.
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| This was before Sam drove to the easy trail entrance, and before we had our "gear" on. Rebecca and I had these pants where you can take off the bottom half of the pants if it gets hot. Kind of clever, but really not so comfy. |
For those of you who have hiked Wachuset, we did not go up the easy short way. Dad, Rebecca, and I hiked up the Balance Rock trail. (Rebecca is my daddy's lady friend, in case you haven't caught up yet.) Meanwhile, as a part of Sam's top 10 summer list, Sam jogged up the easy trail, timing himself. Sorry for lack of info, I don't know the easy trails name! Anyway, the plan was for Sam to get to the summit ASAP (he didn't jog the entire way, the boy's gotta breathe) and then start hiking down the Old Indian Trail and meet us. Balance Rock Trail doesn't go all the way up, so we change to the Old Indian Trail about halfway up.
Are you confused yet? :)
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| Turns out Rebecca and Dad had the same boots. I recommended this pose and angle so it would look cute and romantic. :) Score one for Sonja. |
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| Look closely and you'll see a toad. :) |
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| Rebecca and I leaning on the balancing rocks on balance rock trail. |
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| Changing to Old Indian Trail... |
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| Sam texting Dad. In case you're wondering what the heck "R" means, it's my dad's way of saying "K". Don't ask. This was about 45 minutes before we met with him, approximately. |
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| This trail crosses the ski trails. This reminds me of the movie, "Frozen". What if you were up on one of those things?? |
After Sam met us about fifteen minutes from the summit on the Old Indian Trail, we went all together up to the summit for lunch. Sam's time was 25 minutes flat. Go Sam.
For lunch, we had Peanut Butter and Nutella/Jelly (our choice), honey roasted peanuts, grapes, raisins, water, and chocolate. Delish! We did some planking and horse manning. At the summit, down in a little corner, there's this stone thing with holes in it. Below that is where we eat lunch, and above it is absolutely great for pictures and tanning. :) We're only there for about an hour before we head back down.
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| Some construction going on at the summit... fenced off, so we couldn't explore. :( |
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| This is me standing from the bottom part of the stone thing, sticking my head through one of the holes. :) It's hard to describe what the structure of granite looks like.... |
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| Below the holes of the granite structure, having my lunch. :) Red rosie cheeks! |
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| It's supposed to look like I have no head, and Rebecca's head is supposedly my head. :) What do you think?? |
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| Sam's PLANK!! |
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| Relaxing... with hat hair, except for my bangs. |
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| There's a fish pond at the summit, and look who we found! I think we scared him, which is why he was being so still. |
We left the house around one, and got back around six. Why did we leave at one? Because we didn't prepare things the night before and we don't take things too seriously. Plus, I slept in until ten, just like any other summer day when I'm not at camp or vacation.
Saturday morning around eleven, I was watching the news about Irene. NECN, "Tracking Irene". Considering the broadcast was going out to all of New England, I didn't know what to expect. All I know is that people kept saying, "Prepare for the worst and pray for the best."
I was a mindless fool when it came to hurricane preparation. Why? When I think of hurricane, I think of the pictures I saw on the news after hurricane Katrina hit. According to my dad, Katrina was a category five, and the one headed for us was only a category one. Once I was in the loop, I knew just to expect power outages, maybe some trees or tree branches down. Also a possibility of flooding in the basement, but we got a sump pump. Problem solved.
Saturday was our preparation day. Here's what we did:
-Take pictures of the house from outside, including nearby trees in case any trees fell down. We could use the pictures for before/after pictures, if any serious damage occurred.
-Fill up buckets of water for flushing the toilets. You see, where I live, if the power is out, then everything's out, including water. Score one for thinking ahead!
-Grocery shopping. It actually wasn't because of the hurricane, we just sort of needed some more food in the house for the week. School starts on wednesday for us!
-Made several batches of my Aunt's famous macaroni and cheese casserole. :) Never gets old.
Sunday we had absolutely no agenda. We just played everything by ear. I woke up around ten in the morning, and the power was out. I only knew the time because of my phone. Sam and Ben were still asleep, so I went down to see if Dad and Rebecca were up.
According to them, the power went out sometime around eight. After they got themselves together, the three of us drove in the rain over to Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast. Honestly, that was a little embarrassing. How American was this? My dad went up to the counter, ordering for all of us, including the two brothers still at the house.
"Ya I'll take 3 sausage egg and cheese breakfast sandwiches, two small coffees, a blueberry muffin, ... what do you want?" Looking over at Rebecca and I. After we got the basics for breakfast, dad for some reason threw in an order of a dozen donuts. Oh geez.
''Oh, and a dozen donuts. Yup. Okay, two of the chocolate creams, four of the Boston Kremes, four chocolate glaze, and two vanilla frostings."
Good lord. Everyone got two and a half donuts throughout the powerless day, which was nice, but I hate being that big family ordering a ton from Dunkin' Donuts when all the guy behind us wants is a coffee so he can go home.
We stayed home for the rest of the day, enjoying our breakfast. Sam went over to his girlfriends house, and we played Scrabble etc.
The power came back on around six in the evening, which is when the first thing we did was turn on the TV and watch some "Baman Piderman" from youtube. Yeah, this is America.
Here's the link to the original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7-TQdN40Dk&feature=relmfu
:) So that's what my weekend was like. If you live in New England, or anywhere from Virginia up to Maine, I hope everything is okay and nothing too bad happened!!
