Thursday started with a nice, mellow run on the powerlines and the Gone Fishing trails. It was cool but humid. Very quiet out on the trails. Made a lot of blackberry stops! 😋 (10.1 miles)
Then it was on to all.the.errands, cleaning the house, making banana bread and pasta salad, doing all.the.laundry and getting ready to head out on our final trip for the summer before school starts next Monday. We decided to mix up our annual Bowdoin reunion trip and get together at Neal and Kendra's new-ish lake house near Sunapee, NH instead of camping at Wolfe's Neck this year. I love Wolfe's Neck and it is always fun to be there, but reserving side by side sites has gotten harder as it has become a more popular destination and with Covid, having the flexibility of Neal and Kendra's as a location seemed like a wise choice. After a year's break, we were really looking forward to see everyone!
Friday morning, I headed out for a road run. Possibly it was cooler out but SO muggy. Legs felt tired. (8.0 miles)
We left around 9:30 and arrived in time for lunch. Neal and Kendra's place is really lovely, with a nice yard and fire pit, set up the slope slightly from Chalk Pond. After lunch, we walked with the dogs on the loop around the pond (1.2 miles walked), and then changed into our bathing suits and got out on the pond, Sam in the water and the rest of us on floats. It felt much cooler over there - the car had been reading 90 en route - and it was nice to relax and float around on the water for a bit. Then we headed out for ice cream before returning home to relax around the fire pit. Such a nice afternoon!
Everyone else arrived as it was getting dark and we hung around the fire chatting and catching up before Sam and I finally headed into bed around 10:00.
I woke up early on Saturday and after hearing a bit about some of the trails around the area and downloading a map to my phone, headed out with my pack for a "no plan" random run in the hopes of getting in a few hours on my feet. I ran around the pond and then headed up the old road marked as the Stony Brook trail system. The trail headed up, of course 😉, and after a mile or so connected with Baker Hill Road, which had some nice hills and a good view out over a golf course towards Mt. Sunapee.
From there, I looped around and connected back up with a trail system that took me up Sunset Hill with some hazy views looking out over Lake Sunapee before descending to the lake's shoreline via yet another trail system. The route up from the lake took me through some lovely gardens, and then I took pavement back to the house. All in all, fun meander with a great mix of roads and trails, some neat views and a fair amount of elevation! (11.0 miles)
John Hays gardens
I arrived back to find Sam, Doug and Adam out paddleboarding on the pond 😍 and then they decided to swim out to the little island and over to the dock too. Always great to have Doug around as he is up for any sort of water activity!
We ate lunch and then took the dogs for a walk around the pond (1.3 miles walked) and spent the rest of the day outside around the fire pit, enjoying the afternoon and evening together. After a yummy outside potluck-style dinner, it started to rain so we hastened inside to stay dry and continue our conversations before bedtime.
Bodi relaxing in the yard behind the fire pit
Some of us stayed up later than others (nope, not me! 😉) so the house was very quiet when I woke up. I had a quick breakfast and then headed out the door around 8:00. The morning dawned cool, damp and overcast. I decided to run the loop that Ryan, Nate and Michael had run yesterday, adding on a loop around the pond to loosen my legs up before starting up the hill to the Fishersfield Trail. After Saturday's rains, there were numerous red efts out in the middle of the road, and I ended up seeing a dozen of them at least throughout my run. Always love these little guys - they make me smile 💗
The Fishersfield Trail was a rough, rugged, side-hilly trail that wandered up the ridge along the pond and then out into a wide swath of wilderness. It is part of the larger Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway Trail, which winds 75 miles through this area, but it is little traveled for sure.
As I was wandering along, I came up over a small rise to see something small and black dart down through the woods and straight up a tree along the trail! A bear cub! WOW! I stopped in alarm, hoping I wasn't in between the cub and mama, but thankfully I could hear and see her scurry uphill farther up the trail from me. Of course, I had to get a photo but then I realized I was going to have to retreat, as there was no way I was going to run past the cub and mama! After backtracking a few steps, I realized the cub had jumped down from the tree and was running quickly downhill with mama in quick pursuit. I waited until I could no longer hear or see them, and then decided to continue on along the trail. What a neat encounter, and something I definitely was not expecting! 💕🐻
Lots of mushrooms and oak galls as well as much stopping to consult the map and ensure I was staying on my intended route! I got off the Greenway and onto a dirt road which then connected me to an old dirt road up through the woods, which connected me to the Sunset Hill trail. From there, it was back up to the summit and down, with a final mile on the road back to the house. Between the humidity, fog and the drizzle that started atop Sunset Hill, I was pretty wet by the time I finished up, but happy! Always fun to explore and get on some new roads and trails. (7.4 miles)
We hung out for another couple hours, and Sam of course, enjoyed as much time with the dogs as she could 😍😍🐶🐾
It was so nice to see everyone, and the weekend was a great way to officially wrap up summer! 💗💗
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