Bike and dog adventure.

Jeremy left Maryland on Thursday afternoon to begin our week-long adventure in the northeast. He left with Elka and our minivan to pick up Bob, Katherine and their two dogs Bunter and Wimsey. Jeremy spent the night in Kimberton with them and then on Friday headed up towards Mt Washington – the highest peak in the NE United States.

Sometimes I think Elka is bored because our house is so quiet. Without little kids, it’s very staid. It’s nice to see her so excited to go on this adventure with us.

Mt Washington is famous for having very dangerous weather and has the highest recorded wind speed (over 200 mph) not in a tornado/typhoon. It can be quite cold – even in August. So once a year, they close it to traffic and hold a bike race straight up the mountain – about 7 miles at steady grades of 16-20 %.

He is a crazy person. With all these other crazy people. He did make it to the top of the mountain without stopping – which was his main goal. It was neither cold nor windy.

Then they spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the area and walking the doggies.

They had ice cream. So they ordered pup pops for the doggies which turned out to be two scoops of regular vanilla ice cream with a couple of dog treats in them! I was surprised because usually pup pops are made without sugar which is bad for dogs and for people too! But Elka ate her two scoops without complaining.

Then Edda and I on Sunday, took a flight from DC to Manchester NH where Jeremy and company picked us up and tried to fit two more people plus luggage (wheelchair) into the van. The paddleboard had to go on top – it’s larger than I thought it would be. (Katherine said she wanted to go see lakes that dogs could swim at – hence the paddleboard). I think I dropped the fuel economy down at least 15%. So I better go paddleboarding at least once.

Even though Elka is older and bigger than the other two dogs, the smaller dogs are alpha to Elka and took her bed as their own. So Elka had to squish between two humans. haha.