Zac is up much of the night with a toothache. We’re not sure, but it appears his wisdom teeth are piercing his gum line and it’s hurting him. Being as we are not dentists, we can’t be sure. But he doesn’t sleep well and we’re going to need to keep an eye on that. Regardless, I sleep well, not getting up until 7:30 which is late for me. I am beat, and it shows.
I head to the Metro place in town for coffee, giving a 3rd place a shot. It’s decent but I wouldn’t say it’s great. Coffee is actually good, the espresso ok really. So half-half there. I sit outside and relax for a bit before heading back to the room.
It is 59 degrees this morning, a beautiful morning really. I love these temperatures and this all suits me perfectly.
When I get back we wake the family and eat on the wall.
We plan a hike near Echo Lake but it’s closed to the general public so we change gears and head elsewhere. On the way we go past a bit self-serve jam drive-thru. Lots of these kinds of things in the area. Lots of trust up here.
We decide on the Black Cap peak which is close to the hotel and where the bike shuttle runs are. The climb up isn’t too hard and lots of people are going up & back. This is a very accessible hike and plenty of people are going up here today. But there’s plenty of space so other than the trail, it’s pretty spread out.
Washington, as always, is amazing. Here you can see the clouds slamming into the far side.
On the way down, we are joined by 3 Cedar Waxwings, which I’ve only seen once before at home in the swamp.
We walk from there to the Cranmore ski area, passing the bike run entrances on the way. There are a ton of trees down up here and we need to walk over or around a bunch of them to get there.
We have lunch at the top of the ski hill, which has a lift running to bring people up from the bottom. So the people staying at the Cranmore lodge at the bottom are up here, milling about, making it feel less isolated and more of a coffee & ice cream shop, which it is. We decide not to go into the store and we pick a rock and eat lunch.
We then head back to the car repeating most of what we had done in the opposite direction.
The Strava file can be found here.
We head back to the hotel then go out for a few shuttle runs down the mountain. D and Zac do the first run of Hurricane and I wait. I then join Zac for a run on Hurricane which bounces me all over as I have pressure to run downhill-style flow trails. The run is over 2 miles and has some flow elements in it, but the vast majority is rough, older school style. D brings us back up for run #2 and we do Red Tail, which is better as I lower my pressure. Way more fun on the second pass.
Strava files can be found here and here. We call it a day here as the truck starts to overheat on the way up the last run, which is no good. The elevation is about 1200′ per drive up.
We then head back to the hotel to jump in the pool and have a shower.
We get takeout from Tuckerman’s Restaurant down the street and sit at an overlook not far away and eat dinner. We get burgers which are frankly amazing after these days. I could use a salad but it’s $5 more to eat a salad for dinner here which is a bit crazy. So burgers it is!
We head to town to walk around a bit and grab a magnet in a trinket shop in town. We didn’t manage to do this in Vermont but we’ll be back there one day. Not sure when we will come back here.
To top off the day we go to Trail’s End Ice Cream and get the most massive servings of ice cream ever. They are good but nearly impossible to finish.
At the end of the day we are all cooked. We are asleep by 10:30.
Traveling Normandy 