PEI

We took KT's bucket-list-trip to Prince Edward Island.  A bit of a drive, but we all dealt with it in the comfort of our van!

On the way, we stopped at Fundy National Park: really nice park with a really wet/mossy ecosystem, but it was totally fogged over!

We stopped at a bunch of the little hikes with some nice views:

and a pregnant tree:

We saw a bunch of "Anne of Green Gables" sites.  It was crazy how beloved those books are, especially in Japan!

There were tons of jellyfish in the water: it was really cool watching them.

We stayed right on the coast: spectacular view, but lots of weather!

We hiked out to a beach over this cool boardwalk.

And one of the coolest things we did was go kayaking out by the Hopewell Rocks in the bay of Fundy.  They have one of the largest tides in the world.  We hiked out to the rocks:

and then kayaked between them hours later.

The waves were remarkably high, and the guides took us surfing out on the waves a bit! 

The safe trip: Lincoln Woods

I was itchin to go backpacking again, but it was pretty hot.  So we decided to do the trip that we somehow do every year: Lincoln Woods Tentsite.  It's a very popular area, but we went mid-week so it wasn't bad. 

 It took a bit of coaxing to get Ollie to move along: 

I love that Goggs can carry her own stuff now: makes things much easier!

It's not super-picturesque, but one can catch glimpses of the Pemi-peaks!

It was pretty hot, so we spent most of our time in the river.  Most people go to Franconia Falls, but that place can be a zoo so we just went up the river a bit.  The current was pretty crazy, but it was fun to ride it into one of the big pools!

Rocky Branch Overnighter

Us boys took a quick over-nighter on the Rocky Branch trail, on the way to Mt Isolation.  Would like to make a 2-nighter out of it someday to hit the peak, but this was good to get Ollie used to getting out.  Took plenty of snack breaks along the way.  It always seems to be pretty steep on the way up.

We camped at this little forest service camp site, which was basically just some space and a fire pit.  

We were able to check out a bear canister at the forest ranger station on the way, and made sure to cook away from camp a bit.

We ate at the little river, and headed back home.  On the way in, we just saw a few people and were camping alone.  On the way out, the parking lot was overflowing and we saw a ton of people camping in.  Weekends in the summer in New England get pretty busy!!