Clearwater Camp- aka. week of relaxation while everyone else goes back to school- 2019

The pictures tell the story here.  We had a glorious, relaxing, stress-free week before getting back in to school.  We spent time with friends, went out in the boat, kayak/canoed, floated, played a multi-day game of Risk, ate meals on the dock, read, learned cribbage, played king of the float, and really just enjoyed life.  Life was really rough on this vacation;)

Tumbledown 2019

We spent some time this week visiting our friends from NJ at their rental cottage in Rangeley.  It was an awesome visit with great weather AND we got to bring our boat and tie up right at their house.

Also this week we squeezed in our hike up Tumbledown.  Originally we were planning to hike a different day (that Gabe had off so he could come with us), but we had a torrential rain storm and we had to cancel.  Since we are running out of summer hiking time, this day was our only chance.  Tumbledown is an interesting hike because (depending on how you hike it) there are two separate parking lots each separated by about a mile plus. I tried hard to find another adult to come with us so we could leave one car in each parking lot, but couldn't find any takers mid-week... we went anyway as I presumed I could hitch a ride with someone at the end and back to our car (it should be obvious with our luck where this story is headed).

Long story short, the kids all did amazing on a challenging hike.  There were definitely some touch and go moments when we were scaling rocks and through the "lemon squeeze" section of the trail mostly because there was a river running down due to the rain the day before.  But, we all made it and Audrey hiked the entire thing with a backpack!  She was pretty proud of herself.  We made it to both peaks then had lunch at the tarn where James actually swam out to the island by himself.  I was praying the whole time I wouldn't have to jump into the freezing water to save him!  The others settled for some light wading as the spring fed water was not warm, even at this time of year.

If the hike had ended at the bottom of the trail I think everyone would have had a really proud and positive view of the day... that's not what happened.  As it turns out it is 1.4 miles from one parking lot to the next AND it is all up hill.  We started walking up the road... no cars came in our direction... we dropped all of our packs half way... I dropped 2 kids 3/4 of the way and left them just sitting on the side of the road... about 400 feet from the parking lot someone picked me up and gave me a ride to the parking lot;)  We all survived the day long hike and in the end everyone was safe and proud of their accomplishment.  I did have to promise though that we wouldn't hike it again without 2 cars, or at least on a busier day where we could actually get a ride;)