A lot to catch up on

I didn't post yesterday because Thursday was our last full day with our friends before we took them to Bangor Friday morning. I'm writing this Friday night after a day of wind and heavy rain. We had a high of 66. It was an afternoon to unwind, do laundry and organize all of my projects. First, I'll catch up on the ongoing projects and then I'll tell you about our wonderful Thursday hike.
Oh, for anyone interested, Ian won the Cribbage tournament 9 - 8. He started out with a wide lead and we were tied before the last night but the cards just were not in my favor.
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I don't like riding in a car with nothing to do, so I started a new donation chemo hat on the ride to and from Bangor. 
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The abay blanket seems to be the thing I most want to work on so I've made the most progress on it. I will do one more set of rows in the three colors and I think I'll finish off with a final row of the dark blue before I add the border. I love how it's looking and I've got plenty of time to finish it before the baby shower in late October.
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I think I only have a couple more rounds on the sweater before I'm ready to sew the shoulders and add the cuffs. I've finished 1 ball of yarn on each side and started the second.
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I finally pressed the last set of blocks and took the time to lay them out the way they would look in the quilt. I'm loving it so far. I started maring the rest of the blocks that are cut out and I know I'll need to cut more but I will likely not get to that in the trip. We have more friends coming in today to spend the last week with us and I hope to get in lots of hiking if the weather permits.
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Chris, Ian and I had a great hike on Thursday to Gilmore Peak. I keep a map marked with all the trails we have hiked and we have just about done all of the park that we can do. I will not hike trails with ledges and rungs. I'm old and not stupid. As Kevin Hart now says "respect the age".

From Gilmore we can see Bald Peak on the left and Parkman on the right. We have hiked both of those before. We came up a new-to-us trail called Maple Spring and we came down between Gilmore and Bald. It was an amazing hike for all of the different terrain. We were told by other hikers that Maple Spring had been closed for several years for maintenance and we could see the evidence. It's clearly still being built but it was perfectly fine for hiking for us. 


I have lots of photos below to show all the different trail surfaces on this hike. If you aren't interested just skip the rest of this post because that's all that's left.
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We started out immediately in roots and rocks. They had to clear some fallen trees in this section.

Chris' least favorite trail surface is roots. He calls these ankle-breaker trails. I don't mind this as much as he does. Between the roots the surface is very soft.
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This shows how much work they have been doing on the trail. They put in those granite steps several places along the trail and I can't even imagine how long that takes to do! There was an area along the trail where they were building wood bridges and granite steps. They left all of their tools and rigging right where they had been working. I suppose there's not much risk of someone trying to cart off a shovel while hiking these rough surfaces.
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This is the Hemlock Bridge and you can see beyond it where they are building a wood pedestrian bridge on the trail.
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The new trail isn't even totally marked yet so they have hung these blue streamers in the trees as temporary markers. In this section the trail goes up the left side and crosses right where the blue streamers are to go up the right side. The trails crosses back and forth over the stream several times to the peak. It wa a lot of fun to hike this one.

This is a great example of the stairs that they have put in place in some sections. Note that Ian is wearing the backpack that I made for him and he seemed to really like it. Where he is standing in this photo is where I was standing for the next one.
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I'm standing where Ian was in the previous photo looking down over the stream and a pool. There were several really lovely spots like this all along this trail.
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Right near the peak a rock smiled at me to tell me I was almost there!
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The way down was much gentler and had some very different terrain including this beautiful mossy area and a bit of mud.
All in all, it was a wonderful 3 hours. We came home and spent the afternoon floating in the lake and sunning on the porch. It was a perfect last day with Ian and Laura.
Today, new friends (Bill and Laurie) will come to stay with us for the rest of our time here. I'm also looking forward to Tuesday when I get my car fixed!
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