They can just showed me that the reality show we were both on just was selected as number one in the “top 10 reality survival shows to prepare you for the apocalypse”…
What a hoot… As I’m looking around I realize our show is highly rated in that very strange genre… I’ll let took was a near apocalypse like Covid to get it back in circulation.
Funny how this stuff works.
Nite all, nite sam
-me
Today was Labor Day but it seems like every other blurs day. I had a bunch of errands I had to do this morning and prep for some camping I’m doing… It cost me about half the day. One funny thing is I have like a four page checklist of stuff I need to get… And a huge wind burst grab the papers and threw them all over the parking lot at the grocery store.… I spent about 20 minutes finding them all. Luckily I got them all back because they had .Lots of handwritten notes.
Today our friend Ian turn 27… He’s visiting his mom from Ontario where he works. He has dual citizenship so he was able to cross the border… And brought us some bagels. He’s quarantining so we had to stay far away… But it was so great to see him.
Later in the day Dianne and I took a quick hike up Bolton and came down a completely different path using the cobras trail. It was fun taking a different route. We’re getting faster on this climb… We left home at two and got home by 3:30…
OK… Back to work tomorrow… Happy post- Labor Day everyone
Nite all, nite sam
-me

We woke up today and decided we were going to stick around the neighborhood… But we still wanted to make it interesting. We decided to go up robins mountain… Which is literally in our backyard. We used to go up there a lot when we first moved here… There was a great Airplane Beacon tower up there. In fact… The Grange group that used to meet in our school in the 1950s and 60s was called “the beacon light Grange” in honor of the light up on that tower. Diane and I would go up inland climb the tower And it’s a joy the beautiful view of our valley. One time we even camped at the tower and came down and drove into work.… That was a long time ago. Now the tower”
Has been replaced with cell phone towers. There’s a lot of equipment up there and a lot of warnings about not getting too close so you don’t fry your brain.…
We still wanted to hike up there… And ‘Kyle had never seen it. So we drove to the Robin’s Mountain parking lot which was right past the fishing game gun club.
The trail was no longer in use because the fish and game folks had posted some signs that basically said… Yes this is a trail but it’s right behind our shooting range so proceed with care… Not very inviting We bushwhacked through the woods to get around the fishing game club and eventually found that much improved trail up to the top of the mountain
We are actually some Serbian guys up there working on the tower… I don’t think they expected to have visitors. But they were very nice
We walk through the woods to try to get a look at the view that used to be there over our valley… But in the 20 years the trees at all grown up too far.… ‘Kyle claimed one of the trees and was able to see some stuff
We then circle back around the other way. ‘Diane and I wanted to see if we could find the old Long Trail route. The trail used to go right over the top of this mountain and come down pretty much in our backyard.… Again that’s more than 20 years ago… But we were persistent. We stopped at a beautiful look at Rock and called my good friend Dave Hathaway who had a copy of the old trail map. He texted it to us and using that we were able to try following the old trail. It had been completely erased… The Blazes had even been removed… But with Persistence and some luck we were actually able to find some of the trail markings and even some old graffiti. It felt like archaeology.
There was lots of bear scratch activity up there too. We know there’s plenty of bears up here
We then hike down the steep road… And then bushwhacked again to avoid the fish and game club. We didn’t fancy jumping out into a field full of people with guns
It was quite an adventurous hike… Certainly the most adventurous hike we could take within one and a half miles of our house.…
I love where we live.
Nite all, nite sam
-me
Fun day today. Diane and I hiked up to Puffer Lodge from Bolton… It was about a 7 mile hike round-trip… Some beautiful trails up through Bryant lodge
We climbed over the top of Bolton mountain… Which by the way is not very close to Bolton Valley ski area
Then down to the beautiful Puffer Lodge… It’s a lien to overlooks the “Michigan Valley”… It’s amazing that it’s this close from home and you cannot see any signs of human habitation across this broad experience as you look out from it
We ran into quite a few people there which is kind of a surprise given how remote it is. One of them was my friend Chris and his son. Really nice catching up with him..
The other group we ran into later and took some photos of them as well. Really nice people
Later on we went into Burlington to see our friend Julie again… She and her daughters are up visiting from Pennsylvania. Julie lived in our house in 1982… So good keeping up with her
We had french fries!… Probably the first we’ve had in six months
Nice, nice day
Now nice night
Nite all, nite sam
-me