Art of Hiking

 Today we spent the day working on our trail guide. We still had quite a bit of work to get done since we added a hike on Friday. We were able to get super creative with out guide which was fun. It feels super rewarding to finally see our project come together. I feel super good about how our trail guide looks. I think we did a good job with organization on our guide and I think it will be super easy for people to read. Tomorrow we will be adding all the finishing touches to bring it all together! Todays Hours: 2.5  Total Hours: 56

  This week we did three hikes. We started our week off by hiking up to Smiths Pond in Enfield NH. It was the most gradual hike we did in terms of elevation gain. The hike was super pretty and was heavily wooded until the top. We took our time on the hike and enjoyed the pond at the top. There were a ton of salamanders in the pond which was super neat, and in my opinion, was the coolest wildlife we saw during our whole project. The hike was cool for me because it reminded me of the pond we reached on my orientation hike, which I really liked. On Tuesday we spent the day writing our trail guide for our hike.  The second hike we did this week was on Thursday. This day we hiked Kearsarge, and instead of going up and back on the same trail, as we had done on the rest of our hikes, we went up a steeper route and then came down on a less steep route which was super nice because the steep downhills tend to hurt my knees sometimes. Just like when we hiked Cardigan, at the top we went into th

 Today we spent the day working on our trail guide. Since we added a hike yesterday that we didn't intend to do, we had a lot to do today. We wrote about our hike at Kearsarge. It was a fun hike to write about, and it was also fun to pick our pictures to use from our hike because it was so pretty. We are getting super close to finishing our trail guide which is super exciting. It is fun to see our project come together. I am very excited to finish it all up soon! Today's Hours: 2.5 hours  Total Project Hours: 43.5

 Today we spent our day hiking the bulk head and exploring the trails on Proctors campus. We started early in the morning and made our way up to the Bulk Head. We stopped at the Proctor Cabin for a bit and explored, this was a full circle moment for both Bean and Kelby which was super cool to witness. I have never been up to the cabin so it felt like I was crossing something important off my Proctor Bucket list. The hike wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be but the footing wasn’t great in some areas. The leaves from the fall made the trail pretty slippery in some parts. The view from the bull head was super cool and we could even see Kearsarge from the top which is where we hiked yesterday. I am so glad we added this hike to our project!  Todays hours: 6  Total Project Hours: 51

 Today we spent the day hiking Mt. Kearsarge. It was a similar hike to Cardigan Mountain, a little shorter, but similar. The view from the top was absolutely stunning, and we could even see campus from the top! There was good footing the whole hike and we were able to go up a steep route and come back down a less steep route so it was less harsh on our knees. At the top we went into the fire tower just like we did at Cardigan, and that was super cool. We spent a long time chatting with the ranger in the fire tower, and he explained how they locate fires what they do if they see one, and how he has noticed wild fires getting worse with climate change. It was super cool to talk with the ranger, Ron, and today was a great hike and we met some cool people along the trail.  Todays hours: 6  Total Project Hours: 45

 Today we spent the day adding finishing touches to our trail guide. We also did a bit of brainstorming about what we should add to the guide to make it useful. We decided that an author's page should be added, as well as a table of contents, and page numbers to all the pages. Tomorrow we are going to be hiking Kearsarge. I anticipate that it will be a similar hike to Cardigan, and I am excited to do it. We are also going to be hiking the Bulkhead on Friday, which is something I have been wanting to do before I graduated from Proctor, so that will be super fun. We also decided to add the bulkhead because it felt wrong to not do a hike near/on Proctor Campus when we have so much land at our disposal. I am super excited for the next two days! Todays hours: 2.5 hours Total Project hours: 39 hours