Mt Major and Slide Season

On Thursday night we had the opportunity to see the aurora in new england! I was looking at the posts and news about it at work, and decided it would be fun to drive up to NH, hike up a mountain, and watch from the top. It was a good plan, but sadly I had bad timing. 

I decided on Mt Major, of course, because it's my fav mountain, isn't too far, and isn't too hard, and it's got a beautiful view of the West from the top. As I was driving up, I questioned my judgement a lot. There was a ton of traffic and driving was stressful, plus I could see that the sky was red and I was probably missing the aurora that was going on. But, I kept going. When I was 15 minutes away I was like "this is stupid. Am I really going to hike this mountain by myself at night? I could turn around now and save myself a half hour of driving." But I didn't turn around. There's a lookout spot right by Mt Major, so I decided I would stop there and look. I could see a little bit of northern lights from there, but I could tell it would be better from the top of the mountain. So I decided I would just check out the parking lot to see if there were other people there. Which there were - I was not the only one who thought it would be a perfect viewing spot!

So, I hiked on up. On the way up I met two groups of people coming down who said that the view was amazing. But unfortunately by the time I got up there clouds had moved in and I couldn't see anything. I had brought my big puff, a wool blanket and my down sleeping bag, so I got all cozy and decided to wait to see if anything happened. Sadly, the clouds didn't move much, though it was windy as anything. I could tell that it was auroraing behind the clouds because I could occasionally see bits of color, and my camera picked up some lights, but I didn't really see much. I stayed up there for a half hour hoping for a view, but by then it was 10:30, it was going to take me an hour to hike down and two hours to get home from there, and I had to work the next day, so I reluctantly left. Sigh, stupid clouds. I drove home and got to bed around 1:30. A good adventure, even if I didn't see much.

Yesterday a group of us went for a swim off the docks. It's getting colder it the water, about 63 or so, but we were still able to swim over to the club, jump of their platform and go down the slide! So fun. I love that part of October.

My favorite yoga teacher is leaving the studio I currently go to. It's the second time that she's change studios, which is a little frustrating. She teaches in the North End, so I may have to follow her there.