Make no mistake, we'll live while we're young, we'll chase down the sun

Hello again!  Since backpacking we have been doing some rock climbing at Deer Leap.  There is a wonderful Irish Pub that runs along the Long Trail and has rock climbing behind it. We stopped there for dinner after backpacking...

I had a Guinness with Guinness Stew and both were fantastic.  While we waited for our food Matthew destroyed me in darts.  Somehow the Guinness didn't improve my aim.  We spent the next day scoping out the rocks, it was too rainy to actually climb.  The following day it was beautiful and sunny, we pulled out our gear and it was wet!  So spent a day at a campsite drying our things.  We made the most of it, it was a pretty place.  We took the opportunity to drink.  I told you about our new friend in the last post.  He gave us a small sample of this Cranberry pear vinegar.  We mixed it with Jack Daniels and Seltzer.  They were wonderful!

We climbed the next day doing two trad climbs that were really fun.  I didn't get us climbing because that would not be safe, but here are a few shots of us repelling!

 And the view 

In this last shot you can see across the street there is a dirt parking lot, we were allowed to stay there overnight which was very convenient!  After climbing that day we debated staying in the parking lot or camping somewhere.  Matthew convinced me to do a short hike to a shelter.  We started the hike around 6pm.  Along the trail we saw a sign that said tent site but didn't have the name posted of the shelter we were looking for so we kept going.  We did a 6 mile hike out to a random campsite.  This was not ideal and we didn't finish hiking until 9pm.  I was very tired and a bit cranky by the end.  We were only supposed to hike 1.6 miles but missed the site and kept going in search of it.  Oops.  We slept in, read our kindles and drank some tea with whiskey until noon.  We hiked back to the truck, hung out and planned to climb the next day.  Since we did 2 Trad climbs we decided this next climb day we would top rope so we could concentrate just on climbing.  Here are a few shots from that day...

 Best Pano shot I've ever taken!  This is the top of Deer Leap

 Taking photos are a bit dangerous with only two people, I was on a secure ledge so this was the only safe shot we could take

And here's Matthew on the same ledge

Chalked and bleeding!  The casualties of climbing.  

Here's a shot from the dirt parking lot across the street.  The building is the pub/Inn, the rock above is where we climbed.  The Pano shot I took is beyond the trees on the top, not visible from the ground (obviously).

Yesterday was an off day.  This means we stayed at a camp and did a bunch of random things. We found a beautiful site near a river 

We took this beautiful warm day to do our laundry and bath in the cool waters.  We set up a hammock,

took care of odds and ends and discussed some more safety things for climbing.  I enjoyed reading in the hammock for a while.  I'm currently reading the Revenant.  I haven't seen the movie but the book is fantastic!  

This morning I made Bannock.  I was looking for a bread I could easily make in or over a fire.  I came across this recipe on Pinterest https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/d2/22/61/d22261356607c9d0274668b47e1ab86f.jpg  I tried it and it was really easy and tasty!  When I looked up the history it has origins in Scotland, it was made on a Bannock Stane - a flat sandstone placed on a fire for cooking.  We like to make tripods for cooking over the fire.  Here's the bannock cooking.. 

It ended up being too much to eat in one sitting but I'm excited about this recipe.  I can half it and since it's bread we have a lot of uses for it.  We are now in Hanover, VT at Dirt Cowboy Cafe sipping on Italian Sodas and blogging.  We are next headed to the White Mountains in New Hampshire.  Our Wilderness First Responder Course starts in two days.  I'll report again in about a week and half.