Visiting the Storm King Art Center in NY. Massive sculptures on a sprawling 40 acre estate.

Melissa cranking hard on a 5.7 at the Gunks. Route is Strictly from Nowhere.

Having fun at the Gunks, NY. This is before it started raining all week.

Marc and Rachel days after birth of little Hanna Rose.

Bert, the notorious food stealing super pooch at Blair Woods, NH

Pawtuckaway bouldering and babysitting

We've been bouldering for the last few days at Pawtuckaway near Manchester, NH. Granite bouldering in a deep, dark forest with eerie swamps all over the place. The frogs make some funny noises at night. We've liked it so much that we're spending a couple extra days around here. Made some knew friends up at Shagg (Anna and Jeremy) and they joined us down here and brought their slobber-machine dog, Bert. Winnie and Tigger love tag-team wrestling with him.

Marc and Rachel (and their new baby, Hanna) live right around the corner and we're babysitting for a few hours while the new parents get some sleep. We don't really know what we're doing. Hanna was quiet for an hour but now has started pooping every 5 minutes. We have dubbed her the "Poop Machine". Hanna is super cute.

We should be wrapping up here soon and should be at the Gunks (New Paltz, NY) by midweek.

Adam swimming in Round Pond at P-Way NH

Shaggadelic

Hello friends and family.

We have become TRUE New Englandah's, AYAH. Went to the Bethel, Maine Chowdah cookoff, and sampled about ten different kinds of chowdah. Aftah that, we went to the 2nd Annual Sunday Rivah Brewing Company's Pig Roast and Turkey Fry. Yep, we ate our way through the great state of Maine. Tigger had to go to the Lewiston, Maine animal hospital for a serious case of gasteroenteritis (tummy ache)...poor little guy, but he's ok. Hurricane Ivan also hit us here, and once again we were SOAKED!

Happy to report our friends Marc and Rachel had a healthy little girl, Hanna Rose. Congrats to the proud new parents . We are still climbing alot around Rumney, NH and Shagg Pond, Maine, although we are wrapping up here and heading back to the Manchester area to boulder at Pawtuckaway. Have met lots of cool folks, and got to spend a lot of quality time with friends Kayte and Jay in Holderness, NH. We also saw the pond (really it's a lake-Squam Lake), where On Golden Pond was filmed. Adam has a REALLY BAD Katherine Hepburn impersonation..."The loons, Norman, the loons!"

We have so many cool pictures to post, but still don't have an easy way to do this with our current computer set up, but will work on this soon. Will update more as possible.

Melissa sending Bottom Feeder (13a) at the Waimea Cliff at Rumney, NH

Tough life for a pooch on the road.

The poor fellah who gave all he could for the free Pig Roast in Bethel, ME.

One word---CHOWDAH!

Adam loved Shagg Pond, some of the best juggy granite climbing evah! Onsighting Shaggin Wagon (12a).

How do you shower on the road? Well, if you're cheap like us, you boil some water and lather up.

The Road Less Traveled

Here we are in Franconia, the one time residence of Robert Frost. We couldn't tour the house, however, because someone lives there...though they do let you tour certain times of the day. We have climbed alot, seen two covered bridges, went to the ocean to eat lobster with Marc and Rach, and tried swimming in a chilly mountain lake. Life is good. Tommorrow we will head to Maine to check out some of the climbing around there. Yesterday we saw "The Basin" or the
"Old Man's Foot". It looked like the kind of water fall flume (natural) that inspired the invention of the modern water slide. We wanted to tube it so bad! Will update more later. Oh yeah, got a Satellite phone call from Scotty in Afghanistan last night while camping in the Nat'l Forest! Too cool to be able to talk between two remote places. We miss him, but he sounded good. We look forward to visiting him in Ft. Bragg in November. A&M.

Melissa sending the classic Venus on a Halfshell (12c) at Rumney. An awesome crimpfest.

Rumney, NH has a lot of spiders. This one was black, huge, and next to an 19th century cemetery...creepy.

Greetings from the Eye of Frances

Hello, friends and family. It has been an interesting start to our adventure. We spent our first night in Nebraska, with a car FULL of mosquitos...ouch. Then we drove through the midwest and spent a night near the beach on Lake Michigan. It was BEAUTIFUL. I took an early morning dip in the water and it was wonderful. We will post a photo of the GIGANTIC praying mantiss we saw near the water. Then we made it to Lion's Head, ONT. This was one of the most beautiful places I have been, and reminded me very much of the Mediterranean. The Bruce Peninsula, a 10 mile wide piece of land situated between Lake Huron and the Georgian bay, is full of quaint little old communities and farms. The water was so pretty, especially on the Bay side, where 200 foot tall cliffs over look the shore and the water was a turqoise blue-green color. We hiked a part of the Bruce trail, where you go through a thick forest of lush deciduous trees, then you come out into a clearing , 200ft above the bay, overlooking the water. We ate alot of fresh fish...ymmmmm. Then it was on to Rochester to see la famiglia. Very nice to see my family and spend time relaxing.

From NY, we drove through the Adirondacks, to which I had never been before. Pretty sad, since I grew up in the state! The leaves were beginning to turn already, and though not at their peaks, you could see the beginnings of brilliant oranges, reds, and purples. We saw the Olympic training Center at Lake Placid, and started in disbelief at the super tall, super steep ski jumps. We then spent an afternoon climbing at McKenzie Ponds, a pretty little forest with some very hidden boulders. We didn't stay too long, though, because we had to catch the Lake Champlain ferry to get us into New England. This was a very nice cruise at sunset which took us from Essex, New York, to Burlington, VT. We busted out the rest of the drive, and headed to New Hampshire where we currently are, soaking wet, having spent the last night stuck at the WalMart in Plymouth, NH. Our ingenious little flip-pac camper is pretty nice most places, but since we are getting pounded with pouring rain, and put our rain fly on inside out, we are pretty much soaked to the core. The dogs are dripping, as is 90% or our clothing, and the inside of our truck, including our bed. So far, so good...HA! Our patience have really been put to the test, as the rain hasn't let up in over 24 hours....so, maybe we will get to enjoy NH one of these days, but it is hard to tell. We also cannot find a campground anywhere in the state that costs less than $20 a night. No joke! We take for granted out West all of the BLM and Forest Service land that is cheap or free to us, but it is definitely NOT the case out here. Oh well. For now we are visiting our old friends from Ft. Collins, Marc and Rachel, who live in nearby Manchester. We will post more later when we can. Hope all is well with everyone!

A quick stop in Rochester to see the family. Gia and Gabrielle played with the dogs.

Melissa at Lion's Head, Ontario. The scenery was awesome but the climbing was a pain because you have to rappel into every route. We decided to go swimming, instead.

Tigger in North Platte, NE. The first morning of the road trip. Melissa's allergies were terrible!