The Sincerest Form of Flattery: Part Eight

You can find the "official" (yeah, those are air quotes) explanation of the Copycat Project by clicking on the tag at the end of the post, but the long and short of it is this: I haven't updated my blogroll in forever and a day, and rather than update it now I find it much more fun to tell you incrementally about blogs I read (that, uh, you might want to read too, if that wasn't already obvious). Each blog gets its own post, written in the style of, or about the topic of, the recommended blog. Hence the fun little "Copycat Project" name.

This Copycat post kind of snuck up on me. And by that I mean that I was catching up on my woefully neglected Google Reader account and happened upon a post by ddayporter over at Bananas, Continued that made me remember that I have this Copycat Project at all. Specifically, it was this post. She went to Mount Blue State Park recently. I went to Mount Blue State Park recently. She hiked the Brook Trail on Tumbledown Mountain. I hiked the Brook Trail on Tumbledown Mountain.

Clearly this is the universe's way of telling me I should link to her blog, right? Right. So go read. Maybe right-click so you don't lose your place here, ok? It's just not fun until you have 15 tabs of stuff you want to read, that's what I always say.

Anyway.

We went camping this weekend! The Awesome Husband and I trekked a couple hours north with his dad, my parents, and my brother. We left Mr. Cecil at home with a team of dog sitters (no, really), which very likely was a wise decision. Lower cute quotient on the photos, but higher sanity quotient for everyone involved.

Hiking Tumbledown turned out to be the main event, for sure. The leaflet provided by the park that outlined the hiking trails indicated that the Brook Trail should take 2-3 hours round-trip, and that it's a moderate hike. That sounded good, so my father, my brother, The Awesome Husband and I packed some fruit and granola bars and set out to hike it.

I'm not sure who wrote that leaflet or decided that the Brook Trail is a 3 hour "moderate" hike, but wherever they are, I'm pretty sure their pants are on fire. The first hour or so was lovely, and then it started to get progressively more challenging. My dad turned back to the car a little more than halfway up the mountain, and we later assured him that it was a good decision. It was sort of like walking up an uneven staircase, two steps at a time. For an hour.

We took a lot of water breaks.

At least it was pretty.

The increasingly noticeable ache in my knee was totally worth it when we got to the summit, where there's a nice view and a pond. And a feeling of accomplishment (or something).

So, so, so happy not to be climbing anymore.

Triumphant!

By the time we headed back down to the car, we were so focused on a) not getting injured, and b) just being done with the hiking already, we didn't really take any photos. But I'll tell you what, the turkey and manchego sandwich I ate at 3:30 that afternoon was the best food ever in the history of the universe.

And there are no pictures of that either.