Art of Hiking

 Today we spent the day finalizing our trail guide. We added the finishing touches like table of contents and page numbers. Our trail guide turned out completely different than I thought it was going too, but I am glad with how it turned out. I think that anyone could look at our trail guide and complete any of the hikes we did without a problem, so that is pretty cool. Although no one might use our trail guide ever, I hope one day someone does. I am so sad that this was the last day of our project, but I am so glad we did it. I love senior project!  Todays hours: 1 Total Project hours:57

 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

 Today we spent the day working on our guide. We wrote our pages for our hike to smiths pond yesterday. I wrote the trail description. Kelby did the topo map. Bean did all the features and driving directions. Tomorrow we will be printing out what we wrote today and adding it to our trail guide. I am excited to get creative with our guide tomorrow.  Todays hours: 5 Total Project hours: 36.5 (we added wrong yesterday)

  Today was the 7th day of our senior project and we spent the day hiking in Enfield NH. Today was the most chill hike we have done yet in terms of terrain and elevation gain. We did Smith Pond Hike which was around 5 miles round trip and clearly by the name it was up to a lake. The lake was super pretty and there were lots of salamanders swimming around which in my opinion was the coolest wildlife we have seen so far on this project. We took our time on the way up and down and spent time exploring around the lake and even ate some lunch on a bench next to the lake. We made sure to take some nice photos and enjoy the scenery. I look forward to writing our guide about this hike tomorrow!  Todays hours: 6 Total project hours: 32.5

  This week, Bean, Kelby, and I hiked twice and worked on our trail guide. Monday we started the week out by hiking Cardigan Mountain. Although we took a wrong turn at the beginning of our hike we figured it out and found our way to the right trail. The hike was super fun, and we even got to go inside of the fire tower at the top. We learned an important lesson on this hike that is to always bring more layers than you think you will need because it was super windy at the top of the mountain and we kind of froze. The hike wasn’t too strenuous, so it was a good way to start off the week.  Tuesday and Wednesday we spent the day working on our trail guide. We figured out the design we wanted on our guide, and what we needed to include for each hike. We figured that things such as elevation gain, terrain, features (wheelchair accessible, restrooms, parking), were important things to note about every hike. We also decided to include photos from the hikes, as well as a detail description of

 Today we went to school in the morning to work on our trail guide. We put finishing touches on our trail guide from our two hikes this week. Since we all had sports commitments today we weren’t able to work for crazy long. It was good that we spent time working on the guide today though because we are now in a good place to begin work again next week. We now have our guide complete for both hikes this week. On Monday we will hike again. We are going to hike a different hike than we anticipated on doing Monday because the drive is way too long to be able to make it back in time for sports commitments. Todays hours: 1 hour Total project hours: 25.5 hours

 Today we spent the day working on our trail guide. We added all of the information from yesterdays hike to our guide. Today I learned that using the time stamps of photos is the easiest ways to coordinate directions with mileage and markers along the trail. This made it much easier to go back and write the trail description. I’m glad I figured this out now because it will make writing the rest of our guide a little bit less tedious. Yesterdays hike was super fun to write about as it was quite a bit more exciting than cardigan. We also researched some additional hikes we could possibly add next week if we felt up to it.  Todays hours: 5 hours  Total project hours: 24.5

 Today we spent the day up in Franconia NH hiking! Today was our most challenging hike yet, and was super fun! We encountered hard terrain and snow along the way but we persevered and made it to the top. Although we might’ve not had the proper footwear for todays hike it was a blast and I’m so glad we did it. The drive was a little long but the views made up for it. We did start our hike off on the wrong trail but a super kind man helped us out to get on the right path! I am super excited for adding todays home to our trail guide tomorrow since it was such an exciting hike.  Todays total: 6 hours  Project total: 19.5 hours

  Today was the third day of our senior project and we spent a total of 2.5 hours working on our trail guide. After today our project total so far is 13.5 hours. Today was exciting because we were really able to get creative with our trail guide. We worked through some technical difficulties and other mistakes on our trail guide that we were able to correct. We now have a good format for the rest of our guide, and a theme for our decorations etc. Tomorrow we will be hiking a much more difficult trail up in Franconia, which we are all very excited about. Tomorrow will be a great challenge for us, and we might encounter some snow which will be interesting! 

 Today we spent the day outlining our trail guide for three hours and then two hours in writing our guide. We spent five hours working today, bringing our project total to 11 hours!!! It was a very fun and productive day for our group. We spent a lot of time bouncing ideas off of eachother and working through conflicts of decisions. We almost finished our first page today, but the stuff we didn’t finish such as decorating and our designing we will do tomorrow. Today gave us a good idea of what our trail guide will look like, and now we will be able to be more efficient in the future. I look forward to tomorrow to get busy decorating and being creative! 

 Today was our first day of Senior Project, and I would say it was super successful! We started our day off early and headed to Cardigan Mountain for our first hike. We went the wrong way at first, but luckily figured it out before we got too far, and got on the right trail. The hike was 4.5 miles round trip which was the perfect length for the first day. We spent time exploring at the top, and even spent a long time inside the fire tower at the top talking to the forest service rangers. We made our way back down and explored some more in the area, making sure to take our time on the hike and take lots of photos and notes for our trail guide. While hiking we also talked about our trail guide and the various things we want to make sure we include, such as elevation gain, the terrain of the hikes, and what level the hike is difficulty-wise. I am super excited to get to work on our trail guide tomorrow and for our next hike.