Nor'easter

SO we survived our first Nor'easter. WOW. We had strong wind and driving rain from Thursday night until Saturday morning. 60 mph gusts out near the lake house. Good thing the dock was out or we would have been diving in Lake Champlain looking for missing wood panels. I bet these boat owners wish they had taken it out of the water....

Most people hunker down and ride out these storms inside. Unfortunately for us, we have a young and energetic dog that doesn't know or care about Nor'easters. Friday afternoon you would have found me and Willow at the dog park, with me trying to keep my umbrella from turning inside out, feeling a little like the man below. I was miserable. She didn't seem to notice.

Courtesy of the Washington Post

We did venture out Friday night as well for dinner with some new friends. After dinner we walked next door where an unusual bluegrass band was playing. I wish I had a tape of them....They covered songs from Justin Beiber to Journey, giving them a bluegrass twist, all while wearing karate outfits. Very entertaining.

The Nor'easter brought mostly rain to the valley, but snow to the mountains. Matt, of course, was ecstatic. He couldn't wait for the skies to clear up so we could hike on Sunday. We drove to Lincoln, VT to hike Mt. Abraham (one of only a few VT peaks above 4,000 feet). We hoped there would be a little bit of snow up top (so we brought a few extra layers) and Matt could hardly wait!

Here was our view on the way down...Beautiful fall!



The hike started out pretty nice too.



After a few minutes, we started seeing a little snow. Snow + mud made me glad I decided to wear my hiking shoes rather than my running ones.





After the first mile, things looked like this. I started to worry that maybe we weren't prepared enough...



We quickly reached snow like this that only got deeper as we made our way toward the top! As Matt says, it was "full-on winter" up there. I knew at that point that we really were unprepared. We really could have used crampons, hiking poles, and waterproof pants.



It was pretty fun to see this kind of weather and Willow LOVES the snow, so we had a good time hiking up. Check out the great conditions at the top. You can't read the sign but it says "Mt. Abraham - 4,006 feet." Do I look cold yet?



Coming down went well about 2/3 of the way. The rocks were a little slippery and, as I told you, I fall at least once so it wasn't unusual that I lost my footing a few times. It's not usually a big deal, but on this hike the first fall caked my pants and thin cotton mittens in mud so Matt had to listen to some pouting the rest of the way. I wish now that I had a picture of that but I was in no mood at the time. Oops! I apologized to him later :)

As much as I like winter, it was really nice to come back to the sunny fall at the bottom! Hope you had a good weekend. Happy Monday!