A camping re-cap

Hey All -

I thought I should do a brief re-cap of our camping weekend!  We left Boston around 2:30 on Friday afternoon.  Before we got in the car, we paid a quick visit to Starbucks and I got a Frappuccino Light for the car ride.  I used to never get Frappuccinos at Starbucks because they were soooo full of calories… but now with the Light option, a tall size is between 90 – 130 calories, depending on what flavor you order.  On the rare occasion that I do have one of these drinks, they usually count as my afternoon “snack”.

The traffic getting out of town on Friday wasn’t pretty, but it was not as bad as I thought it would be. We made it to the White Mountains and our campground by 6 o’clock and that was a lot earlier than I thought we would be getting in!

Here is a picture of Ben starting to set up our tent:

On Friday night we had real camper’s food for dinner… I had a hot dog and a half a serving of noodles. . . I felt like I was roughing it!
Here I am on Friday night enjoying a beer by the campfire. I don’t actually drink beer that much – but when I am camping, I will definitely have a beer after a long day!

It was cold both nights and I had a mid – weight fleece jacket that I wore on both nights.  On Saturday night I was also wearing a wool hat.

On Saturday morning I was planning on having instant oatmeal because it’s super easy to boil water over a camp fire… but Ben surprised me with a real breakfast of eggs, bacon and toast. I had two eggs, two pieces of crispy bacon and a piece of toast.  About an hour after breakfast (oh – did I mention the instant coffee we had at the campsite!? Yum!) Ben and I started off on a great hike. We left our campsite and started off to Lonesome Lake…

I think it took us about an hour to get to the Lonesome Lake hut which was about two miles from our campsite – with an elevation gain of about 3,000 feet. The area was beautiful!



Here I am walking across one of the many wooden walkways on the trail…

I had my Camelbak, treking poles, and compass with me… and a map in my pack… I think I was pretty well prepared. I needed the long sleeve shirt because while I was hiking up hill I was hot (and in a Northface tank top) but once the trail leveled out, it was cool once again.

One of my favorite part of the hike was the fact that we were hiking on the Appalachian Trail!!!!! Wooo – hooo! Most of the trail is marked by white blazes and here is the first one I saw:

Blue Blazes are a little different, they are near the AT but aren’t officially part of the trail… a lot of hikers that follow the blue blazes are called “Blue Blazers” and some AT hikers think that Blue Blazers are not actually hiking the AT… it can be very controversail in the AT hiking world

Ben and I were Blue Blazing it for a while…

When we got up to the Lonesome Lake hut, Ben and I took a break and both had a Clif Bar. I had the banana bread flavor, and it was quite good especially after a lot of hiking.

Well, I think that about wraps it up. We had SO much fun this weekend, and I cannot wait to get back to the White Mountains soon for another hiking trip!

The first couple of days …

Hi Guys -

Hope you are having a good week so far.

Ben and I had a great hike on Sunday – even though the temperature was only in the high fifties on Sunday, I was comfortable hiking in my favorite City Sports tee-shirt most of the way – but being a responsible hiker, I had two long sleeve layers for when I wasn’t hiking up such an incline, and in case the weather got colder.  Here is a pic from the hike – I am holding up two fingers for “Hike #2″ of the spring season.

I’m not sure how far we hiked on Sunday (but I am going to figure it out – and I will report back when I do!) but we hiked for about two and a half hours.  It was so much fun! After the hike Ben and I went to the movies (in our stinky hiking clothes – nice!) and saw the movie Duplicity. If you’re looking for a good movie to see this weekend, I highly recommend it – we both liked it a lot. After the movies, I actually got myself to the grocery store – but I certainly did not have a “big shop” in me.  Instead I bought a light bread and Chobani yogurts for this week – they were on sale!!!

On Monday I had oatmeal for breakfast – Quaker Weight Loss banana bread with no add ins.

I was hungry by 11 am but managed to get through until lunch.  I was so excited to enjoy Chobani once again in my lunch! I cut up strawberries and blue berries and mixed those in with the vanilla Chobani and it was wonderful.

Along with the fruit and yogurt I had a peanut butter and jam sandwich on “light” oatmeal bread.  I really do not like “light” bread, but the entire sandwich was only 210 calories – and with the yogurt and berries, it was a pretty good lunch.

As an afternoon snack, I had crackers around 4pm.  For dinner last night I made Trader Joe’s steamed chicken wantons, rice and steamed broccoli. I made extra – and had the left overs today for lunch today (Tuesday).

FYI – if you are looking for a quick,  easy and tasty veg to add to a meal, I highly recommend frozen broccoli and cauliflower. I love both of them and they are so easy to prepare!

For breakfast this morning the only thing I knew was what I did not want and that was oatmeal. I really wanted a bagel. (When do I not want a bagel!?) But the caf at work only had one and I think it was at least day old… so I passed on the bagel.  Instead I bought a Nature Valley granola bar. I love these things, but when you really want a bagel, they don’t really do the trick. However, I cannot complain since I made it until 12:30 for lunch today.

Lunch was left overs and about a half a cup of chobani with strawberries and blueberries again.  At 3pm I had a small piece of carrot cake to celebrate my friend Sarah’s birthday. What a lovely afternoon snack…!

Last night I finished the book Walking Home by Kelly Winters.  The book was a really great read – so if your interested in reading a book about hiking and the AT, I recommend it. I am now thinking about reading A Journey North by Adrienne Hall. It is another book written by a female walking the AT.  I’m a few pages into the book, and so far so good.  I checked Amazon and a few other websites and this book did not get quite as many great reviews that Walking Home received – but I am hopeful that this book will also be great. I will let you know.

OK, signing off for now. Have a great Hump Day everyone!

Is it Hump day already!?

Hey Guys-

Wow, I am such a blog slacker this week! I’m sorry. I do not know how it is Wednesday night already, and this is my first post of the week. Oh well. Things have been so busy – and I have accomplished a lot, so I guess that is a good thing.

This is going to be a basic catch up post… so forgive me if it is a little hard to read!

This week I have been enjoying oatmeal for breakfast. On Monday I had oatmeal at home before heading to work, I added a spoonful of peanut butter and a small amount of trail mix… here’s a picture:

This oatmeal was the best of the week – because I made it with skim milk instead of water. The milk adds more protein, and the peanut butter adds some protein and fat which keeps you full for a long time. Sweet!

Today I got to work before 8 o’clock (at 7:45 to be exact!) and had oatmeal before my two new interns started their first day. I was relieved that I got to work early enough to have breakfast before my super busy day started.  I even had enough time to snap a photo:

This oatmeal was sort of boring because it was made at work (with water – meh!) but the trail mix on top was pretty good… almonds, peanuts, dried raspberries (my favorite!) and little pieces of dark chocolate… For some reason I got super hungry at 11:15 this morning. I totally ate half a Cliff Bar!

This Blueberry Crisp flavor was awesome! I had not tried it before, and I really like it a lot. I can see how this will definitely be in my pack this summer while we are on hikes and camping trips.  I did not get around to having lunch until about 1 o’clock (so glad I had my mid-morning snack!) and my options were very limited. I decided on a tuna sandwich from the caf… and didn’t have time to take a picture. The protein was great though, it kept me going until I left work.

Yesterday after getting home from work I went on a three and a half mile run.  It was my first outdoor run in quite some time… and I’m feeling it today! Our neighborhood is sort of hilly… for those of you who follow the Boston Marathon – have you ever heard of Heart Break Hill? Well, that’s my neighborhood – and  I run that hill almost every time I run outside.   Yesterday I was so pleased to see  that my Road ID had arrived in the mail. I actually felt safer wearing it!

After the run, Ben and I went over to our friend Jenn’s house.  We had dinner (I had two pieces of pizza and one boneless chicken wing – and chips! SO glad I went out for that run before hand!) and we watched the Twilight movie. I had read the book – and I started reading the second book, and have not gotten through it yet, but I might just be inspired by the movie to give it a second try. The movie was really entertaining!

A couple of days ago, I picked up a load of bread from our neighborhood Great Harvest:

This bread was wonderful. I made turkey sandwiches, peanut butter sandwiches and toast with this stuff. Yum.

Here is what I had for lunch the other day – an awesome salad, and a little while later a great Larabar.  As I have said before, I simply LOVE Larabars… because so often I am very hungry, and this bar is one of the few things that will fill me up for hours. LOVE IT!

Another reason I have not blogged in a while is that I have been reading some great books!  I have to say, I wish there were a few more hours in the day. After working, commuting, making breakfast, lunch and dinner, and exercising – there just IS NOT that much time left in the day. So I have been spending my extra hour or two a day reading instead of blogging – so sad that I have to choose, but that is life.

SO – right now I am reading Walking Home: A Woman’s Pilgrimage on the Appalachian Trail. I really like this book a lot – and if any of you like reading books about the outdoors, camping and hiking – I highly recommend it!  It will also make you appreciate your bed, WATER and food a lot   While I have been reading this book, I think about how you have to be a good writer to keep people interested while you are walking 2,100 miles in the forest!  But Kelly Winters definitely does it. She will keep you turning the pages. I am really enjoying it.

Well, I’m going to sign off for now and get back to my reading. I will be back tomorrow! Hope ya’ll are having a good week so far.

the week continues…

Hey Everyone -

I hope you all had a great Tuesday.  My work day was long, but productive and fun. After being on my feet for over eight hours, I decided to skip the gym and hit the Library instead!  But more on that later…

I am happy to report that Quaker instant oatmeal is back on the breakfast rotation! Ben and I stopped by the grocery store on Monday night, where I discovered that my Weight Control Banana Bread Quaker oats were on sale – which made me happy.

This morning I ate breakfast at 8am. I put half a banana and a on the go packet of Barney Butter into my oats. I was set for four hours with this awesome breakfast.

I spent most of my work day with two professional photographers.  Watching them work made me realize that my blog photos are pretty bad. I’ve been wanting a new digital camera for a while… there are so many great cameras out there… but I’m definitely going to hang on to mine for a while.  But I will still dream about getting a new one every now and then. 

For lunch I made another salad, and put a little bit of salmon on it and I had a small serving of the turkey chili that was left over from last night. I sprinkled the Mexican cheese and added some fat free sour cream – the chili was great! Here is what lunch looked like:

There were also BROWNIES at work today… there were three different kinds: chocolate, chocolate peanut butter and  peanut butter chocolate. I tried a piece of each of them, and had seconds on the peanut butter chocolate brownie. They were all great. Lunch was very filling today with  the fiber and protein combo. I was full until about 7 o’clock tonight! Impressive – considering that I am always hungry!

After work I went straight to the Library. One of the many things I love about living in Newton is our amazing library.  Do you ever have a craving to re-read a book?? I have this desire a lot. Over the weekend I really wanted to start reading Bill Bryson’s A Walk In The Woods – if you have not read it, you have to! It is one of my favorite books.  Recently I have been wanting to re-read my favorite book… and the worst thing happened – when I went up to our loft / library to search for my book, I discovered that it was missing!!! Instead of running down to Newtonville Books and buying another copy, I decided to head over to the Library and check out their copy… I have not stopped my search for my book. (I think it might be at my mom’s house, because I let her borrow it last year, and probably forgot to get it back!)

Over the last couple of weeks I have been daydreaming of spring time and outdoor activities… camping and hiking mostly. I have often thought of how cool it would be to hike the Appalachian Trail.  Even though I will probably never be able to be a “thru-hiker” I love the AT and I can’t wait to hike a small part of it this summer!

While I was at the Library, I looked up some other books about hikers on the Appalachian Trail. I checked out A Journey North by Adrienne Hall, and Walking Home: A Woman’s Pilgrimage on the Appalachian Trail by Kelly Winters.  The other book I wanted to check out was Walking with Spring by Earl Shaffer, but my Library did not have a copy. (Maybe Newtonville Books has one calling my name!) Earl Shaffer was the first person to be a thru-hiker on the AT.

Wow, there was a tangent for you…. ahhh the AT. I will continue to dream about summer, camping, hiking and the AT. But on to dinner.

Dinner was very strange tonight. I had dinner and movie plans with my good friend Jenn tonight – but she e-mailed me today to let me know that she had a horrible cold, and we decided to cancel our plans.   [Jenn -REST!  Seriously, get extra sleep tonight and feel better soon!!!] I could not decide what to have for dinner tonight! I had already had a bit of turkey chili for lunch, so did not really want it again.  When I first got home from work I enjoyed a special treat from Wilson Farms… banana milk!

This milk was sweet, but really good! I think the small amount I drank really filled me up for a while… but eventually I did have dinner, I settled on a Trader Joe’s chicken tamale.  I used some salsa and fat free sour cream and it was good.

While I was reading Walking Home I enjoyed a few Sour Patch Kids… this is an old pic – so I did not eat an entire bowl full, but thought I’d include the photo to spice things up!

Well, I’m going to get back to my reading on the AT… hope everyone has a great Wednesday!