Went and checked the trail card again (while Dad's in Aruba) and found this little gal peeking in one early morning. 

    I got my Dad a Primos trail camera this past Christmas (Primos TruthCam 35), and he set it up shortly thereafter.  Well, about a month has passed and sure enough, as you will see below, we have some activity in the woods behind his house.  What excites us the most is that the camera isn't up on the hunting property, where there will surely be more game activity.  We'll move it up there some time this spring, but for now it'll stay perched on this same tree in the many acres behind his house.

    This past Saturday Jamie (my brother-in-law) and I brought my sled down to Dave's shop to do some preseason tuning.  It wasn't anything overly technical, which Dave is adept at, but it was still a blast to get the sled up on a lift and get some work in.  Our first chore, besides cracking a 9am beer, was to mark out and drill the stud holes, 48 in all.  I would have gone with 96, the standard amount for trail riding, but with 1900 miles already on the OEM track 96 would have potentially over-stressed the track.  48 was the perfect number to handle icy corners, hills, and the occasional rip around a lake.  After we finished up the studs and continued with our liquid breakfast our next task was to take off the factory runners and put on some Woody's Dooly 4" carbides.  Like I said, nothing too complex.  Dave spent a good hour or so adjusting the two rear shocks and the front suspension, and voila, I had a trail-ready 2005 Polaris XC 700 SP.  With hunting season over, all of my attention is now focused on snowmobiling and I can't think of a better way to spend a Saturday.  We finished up by hitting Dave's favorite local lunch spot, George's in Pascoag, RI, and proceeded to gorge ourselves on "stuffies," "iceboxes," and all kinds of fatty goodness.  It was a great day all-around, and with my sled all set to hit the trails I couldn't be more excited.

    A rare October nor'easter blew into the region this weekend dumping about 7" on heavy, wet snow in the greater Worcester area.  Areas north & west of Worcester such as the New Hampshire border and the Berkshires received as much as 20"-30"...it set records, it downed trees, it severed wires, but it also allowed me to take the sled for its virgin ride, and it also allowed me to take my son Hunter, who is all of 16 months old, for his first ride around the backyard...the video is shaky, but I think it's potentially Oscar-worthy.

    Yesterday proved to be one of the most successful Saturdays in recent history.  I woke up bright and early and made it out to the fields that abut the hunting property to do some early morning pheasant hunting with two buddies from work, Leo and Tim.  We made our way through the fields for a few hours, seeing a handful of birds, but ultimately returned home with nothing.  It still felt great to get out and spend some quality time in the outdoors trying to stock out freezer with fresh meat.  I ended up having to cut the hunting short in order to be ready to head to Springfield, MA to the site of the "Big E," the Eastern States Exposition, for the annual Snowmobile Association of Massachusetts (SAM) snowmobile show.  It was like a time warp, and it was awesome.  Walking around the show grounds with my dad, uncle, and cousin Garry - the original snowmobile group - after all this time being out of the sport was like being transported back 20 years to when the four of us would visit similar shows when my dad and I were first getting into the sport.  Snowmobiling carries so many memories for me and the opportunity to get back into it is going to make this winter one to remember.  I ended up getting a new modular helmet and dad grabbed a case of synthetic oil, and being immersed in all of the new sleds and gear really got us pretty revved up for the season.  There are still plenty of weeks of pheasant and cottontail hunting remaining, turkey season is right around the corner, and deer season is in December, so it's definitely going to be a busy fall leading into snowmobile season.

    So growing up, snowmobiling was a huge part of life.  My dad and uncle bought new sleds in the late 80's and I started going with full-time (almost every weekend from Christmas through mid-April) in the winter of 1992.  Each weekend seemed to surpass the last, and it was the best thing my dad and I shared.  For close to fifteen years snowmobiling dominated my winters, yet the amount of trips started to dwindle as the younger generation of guys went to college, got married, had kids & jobs, etc.  Well, the last two years have seen a resurgence among out group of riders. First, Garry (my cousin) went out bought a brand new 2008 Ski Doo MXZ Adrenaline 600 last year, and then Jamie followed suit with a 2002 Polaris 600 EDGE XC.  This spring, myself, my dad, and Steve all caved to the peer pressure and also got some new rides (can be seen on the Sleds & Gear page).  So starting next winter we will rededicate ourselves to the sport that has fashioned some of the best memories in our family.

    Yesterday was the first semi-warm and semi-dry day in months, and we took advantage of it.  Myself, Brooke, our dog Fletch, and Patrick went up to the hunting property and hiked around for a few hours.  It was impressive how much snow was still on the ground despite the warmer temps here recently; over 1' in some areas, whereas our entire yard is (dead) grass.  We hiked around for about an hour, stopped and made some Mountain House dehydrated lunches, and hiked on before one more stop for a cup of instant coffee.  Starbucks Via > NesCafe Instant, and in the words of one local sports radio personality, that is "fact, not opinion."  Fletch's paws were getting a tad irritated from the snow so we hiked out a little earlier than anticipated, but it still felt terrific to get out in nature and breathe some fresh air.  This was our first foray into anything more extreme than living room carpet with our new hiking boots, and both pairs fared extremely well.  Not only were we hiking through slushy, mushy snow, but we regularly traipsed through standing water and new rivulets created by run-off from melting snow.  Our feet were warm and dry, and I was so excited about it mainly because it was the same situation I was in last year on the A.T. with Mark when my old boots soaked through within a mile.  My new, bulletproof Bean hiking boots will surely be friends of mine for years to come.  Brooke is excited about her boots, too, because they kept her feet dry and were "very comfy," but also because they "look cute." Amen to that.  Below is the aforementioned coffee break, with the undrinkable coffee.

    Seriously, is he one of the five funniest authors alive right now? I'm a Stranger Here Myself is pure genius, but what I'm taking the time to type about is A Walk in the Woods, which I just read for the second time (on my new Amazon Kindle 3G).  I first read it back in 2006, before I even knew I was head over heels in love with backpacking.  A few trips under my belt, I knew I had to crack the cover one more time and read it from the perspective of a hiker.  Better the second time around. I'm too tired right now and too a.d.d.-riddled to even begin touching upon every subtopic in that book that really gets my blood pumping, but that book just makes you want to empty your savings account, outfit yourself, quit your job and fly to Springer Mountain, GA.  Even when I expected what was coming, I still had to put the book, er, Kindle down and laugh like I've never laughed from a book.  Every person out on the trail has a little bit of Bryson and a little bit of Katz (and maybe even a little bit of Maryellen) in them.  If you appreciate the outdoors, do yourself a favor and buy/borrow/steal this book as soon as you can. 

    So I was visiting my favorite Google Sites how-to website when I stumbled across the Table of Contents section.  A few hours and two cups of coffee later, and I feel like I've changed the site, for the better.  Each trail report has a table of contents with links to each section, the Day Hikes page now contains every day hike with a link to each section, and each of the three Gear pages has its sections delineated at the top of each respective page.  It's, in my opinion, neater and cleaner, and I feel that with each change this site slowly becomes more refined and user friendly.  This site was conceived after spending countless hours over at www.dorfworld.net, a site belonging to a fellow member of the backpacker.com message boards.  His trails reports had me sitting at work thinking how much fun it would be to start my own site, but "how?" kept popping into my mind - I knew nothing about websites.  I eventually stumbled upon Google Sites (I drink the Google kool-aid), and their ease of use and ridiculous price ($10 a year) quickly made up for their relatively simple layout.  Now, I'm proud to direct people to this site.  Countless other backpackers have their own sites chronicling their own adventures, and sure, it's not built through HTML (am I even using that in the proper context??), and isn't super technical, but the product that Google offers to laymen like myself is nothing short of extraordinary in my mind.  Google now offers some pretty terrific templates for those creating new sites, but there is absolutely no way I would scrap this and start over...maybe down the road they'll offer current sites the option to change over to a new template, but for the time being "slate" is the way for this site to go.

    Anywho, off my high horse.  As some of you know, my buddy Bill went to Glacier last year.  His pictures dwarf anything I display on this site, and ever since last July our conversations have centered around "where are we going to go in 2011??!?!!?"  Well, life happens and things change.  I had a baby. Mark had a baby. Bill got engaged.  Wild West 2.0 isn't happening in 2011, so now we're focused on hammering out two, maybe three weekenders this summer.  Where will we go? Who knows, but if I had to guess we would do one weekend on the A.T. somewhere in the Berkshires, one weekend in the White Mountains, and potentially (hopefully) a three-day weekend in the Adirondacks.  Wherever we go, it would be dutifully chronicled here, with more details than you care for and more pictures than you hope to view.