Mt. Morgan

The girls and I climbed Mt. Morgan. I had last done this a few years ago with Dave and Mer (Lee in a backpack) and so my memory was of a pretty short hike up with some really fun ladders, rock scrambling, and beautiful views of Squam Lake at the top.

Well, let's just say that 2.1 steep miles with a 5-year-old under her own power seems a lot longer. I had pictured that Clara would walk most of the way herself, but realized about ten steps into the trail that that was complete folly. So she went up in the backpack carrier, where she stayed until she complained that her leg was hurting at which point I ended up just carrying her on my hip.

But Lee was a real trooper and went up and down the entire thing on her own, which was fortunate because there was no way I could have carried both of them.. There was lots and lots of mucky parts in the trail, so that was tricky because I'd have to help Lee across them, but my balance was not exactly great given that I was carrying Clara. One foot went in over my ankle at one point, which meant a wet dirty foot the rest of the way. Lee had on white socks which she managed, of course, to keep spotless.

When we got to the ladders, I had one of those "what am I doing?" parenting moments, and I think anyone would have wondered why I was endangering my kids, but they absolutely loved it.

And we were rewarded at the top with a spectacular view.

And, even better, on the way down we saw two snakes, as Lee later told everyone. One, just brown and yellow, that went very fast across the trail. And the second, with a frog in its mouth, but it went very very slowly across the trail in front of us. It was probably going into the woods to have a nice lunch.