Fall Frolics

This weekend I decided that we should take advantage of the nice weather and go climb a local mountain. Chris and I wanted to hike it for a while now, but we just hadn’t had the time. I had been hoping to get some good foliage pictures as well, but that didn’t work out so well.

However, it was absolutely insanely packed with people! First of all, Mt. Monadnock is the most climbed mountain in the world. I’ve hiked it a number of times before, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people there before. There were actually three rangers acting as parking attendants since there were so many people there.

Hiking with so many people also presents a number of challenges. There are a lot of rocks to climb to get up this mountain, and we were constantly waiting for others to climb so that we could go. Also a lot of waiting on the way up for others to come down as parts of the path were only one person wide. (And also there were those rocks to climb.) On the way down we were going pretty quickly, or at least we wanted to. But again we were stuck behind slower people. At a couple of points we asked the various groups if we could pass, or at others climbed quickly off the side of the trail a bit so that we could get around.

So I guess it was kind of fun, but I certainly wouldn’t want to go back at such a popular time again. I much prefer it when you only pass a few other people out on the trail.

On the way up we had passed through a town that was having an event called “Scarecrows on the Common”. There were so many scarecrows through that they were all up and down a couple of the main streets, up to mile or so away from the common. I stopped and took pictures of a few of them. I liked this one because not only did they make the scarecrows, but they also made instruments to go with them.