We left a little frantically on Friday after B was finished work. The campsite where we were staying (at Grand Isle State Park) said that you had to arrive before 9pm, so we were definitely in blitz mode driving down. Google Maps said that it would take about 4 hours, but that's assuming that you're driving the speed limit. For some reason, everybody wanted to drive less than the speed limit that night, so we found ourselves doing 30mph in 40mph zones, and we didn't arrive until 9:15. We still got in to our site, due to a ton of rescue vehicles showing up to help someone who was stuck out on the lake on their boat, so the park people were still around to let us through the gate. We found our site, got set up, and sat in front of the fire for the rest of the evening. Our site was awesome, since it was right at the end of the park, with our back facing private property, and we were sheltered a bit by trees, so it was really a great site to get.
Saturday morning was supposed to be our day of hiking, but then we woke up to the sound of rain on our tent. Bridget suggested that since we were planning on sticking around until Sunday night anyway, why don't we go hiking on Sunday instead, when it's supposed to be bright and sunny? Great idea, says I, so we had a slow morning getting up, and then drove into Burlington to meander around for the day. We spent quite a bit of time on Church street, which is a bit like Sparks Street in Ottawa, only with much better stores, cafés, restaurants and such. We checked out some buskers (like this awesome one man band playing Beatles songs), found B a used Let's Go! travel guide for the UK (my personally preferred travel book series) and ultimately wound up at the Vermont Pub & Brewery, which we'd been to once before, many months ago. 
Some very excellent pints later, and after some time spent gazing out onto Lake Champlain, we decided to pick up some groceries at a fantastic mostly-local groceria and headed back to our site for the night.
The weather on Saturday turned out to be great after all, despite all the forecasts we had read to the contrary before leaving Ottawa, so in retrospect we probably could have gone hiking that day. Unfortunately, the forecast must have also changed for Sunday, since we woke up to a very cloudy morning, and not the bright and sunny one we were promised. The hike we had decided on was Camel's Hump, a mountain with a (supposedly) spectacular 360° view of the Adirondacks, even as far as Mount Washington in New Hampshire. As a side story, I missed the turn to get to the trailhead, which lead us past this alpaca farm. Look at them all! Alpacas are just cool, so we had to stop for some photos. Anyway, when we got to the trailhead, it had started drizzling a little bit, but certainly not hard enough to crush our ambitions, so we started up the mountain.
There are many trails leading up Camel's Hump from all different directions, but we decided on a series of trails which begin to the west and form a loop, which is much more interesting than following the same trail back down again. The first trail was Forest City, which, as the name implies, travels through some very green forests with only a gradual incline, which was a nice little warm-up.
After 1.3 miles, we connected with the Long Trail, where the climb became much steeper, and we were mostly hiking up rocks for another 1.9 miles. This was by far the longest part of the hike, but it also had some really cool caves, as well as this rock face which I think, literally, looks like a face. (It probably has a name, too, but I haven't been able to find it anywhere.) When we finally made it to the top, we were entirely shrouded in clouds, which offered absolutely no view of anything at all. In fact, you can hardly make out Bridget eating lunch 20 feet away. I'm not sure why we just can't get any good views of anything when we decide to go hiking here! I guess our timing is just bad.
Coming down was really quite easy. The Long Trail connects with several other trails at a round junction, and we took the Burrows trail to get back down again. This part was a moderately steep 2.4-mile downhill hike through the forest, and back to where we started. By the time we made it to the car, the sun seemed to be starting to break through the clouds, although I'm not convinced it broke through at the summit of the mountain, since it still looked pretty foggy to me. All in all, it took us about 4½ hours, start to finish, and was definitely worth it. I'd really like to do this one again someday, maybe on one of the different trails, and on a totally cloudless day.We headed off to another nearby state park to make use of their showers, and then back to Burlington for some dinner and pints at (yep, you guessed it) the VP&B once again. Then in the evening, we went to the Higher Ground (a live music venue in Burlington) to check out one of B's favorite bands, The Samples. She'd played them for me before, and they definitely sounded cool, so we decided that it was worth getting home late for.
The show was actually an after-party for a Reggae festival that was happening all weekend, so we caught a couple of bands before them, including one really cool band called Blues and Lasers. I can't really describe their sound all that well, but they had two drummers which was pretty wild. The Samples eventually went on stage around 10:45, and immediately had some technical troubles with the lead guitarist/singer's pedal board buzzing. Three songs in, he broke a string, which was when the show kind of fell apart. He finally got a borrowed guitar about 10 minutes later, played one more song, and they were finished. A bit of a disappointing set (especially for B, I think) but still, I had fun. Then we started heading back to the 'Wa just before midnight, and were home a little after 4am. (Phew!)So there you have it! Another awesome Vermont weekend.
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