I suspect that when other wives say to their husband, “Honey, Saturday is your birthday, so we can spend the day doing anything you want,” they end up buying large quantities of meat for a backyard BBQ, or digging out their smuttiest lingerie, or sipping beers at a sports bar while hubby zones out with a half-eaten chicken wing in his hand.
Most women probably do not end up on an 11-mile, 7 hour forced march, up and down and in between two 4000′ mountains, Mts. Whiteface and Passaconaway.
Since almost 8 months have passed since our last 4000-foot peak bag, I too was eager to knock a few more White Mountain 4000-Footers off of our list. Still, 11 miles is an ambitious trek for long-dormant hiking muscles, and by to time we reached the wooded summit of Mt. Passaconaway, I was ready to stop. But, what could I do? This isn’t a treadmill with a stop button. There is no local bus service.
So I girded my legs forward, refraining from grumbling to Mr. P (it was his birthday). Except when we had to scramble up a series of cliff-like rocks near the summit of Mt. Whiteface. Then, I whined.
When we finally made it back to the car, I thought the adventure was over. But no, not 1 mile from the trailhead, we saw a car stopped in the middle of the road and the occupants staring into the woods with cameras blazing. We slowed down, thinking a moose was going to jump in front of our car at any moment, but no!
It was two baby black bears, crawling up and down a tree and crying for their mother! They were sooooo cute. We wanted to get out of the car to get a close-up of these two cuties, but who knows when mama would return, ready to rip off our faces for even looking at her children? Mr. P, took a video (here), proclaimed it the best birthday present ever, and then we drove off.
