Traiga La Camilla Que No Aguanto Mas...

I've never been outdoorsy...not in the least.  I don't like to be hot, I don't like to sweat and I'd be much happier if bugs did not exist.  In reality, though -- there will be times when the temperature will rise above fifty degrees in New England (for a minute in May, I was skeptical!).  With rising temperatures, you will inevitably sweat (or just swell up like a giant tomato, like me!) -- and those pesky bugs will buzz all around you.

So, why on God's green Earth would I even contemplate a walk, let alone a HIKE, in this wilderness? Exercise. Plain and simple.

Not pesky, but I don't consider a butterfly a bug!

My friends, I've been blessed like many Cubans to be "big boned" and I've realized that I'm not getting any younger nor am I ever going to get any thinner just sitting like a Buddha in from of my computer. It's not for lack of equipment...I have it all!  Treadmill, workout video's, Wii Fit, Zumba for the Wii, Dance Dance Revolution.  Just because I have the tools doesn't mean I will utilize them. As my thirtieth birthday looms in a little over a month, I know that I have to step up my game if I want to ever give Mi Gringito the little guajiro's he wants!

You think I will look like her if I do this daily?

So how does one vaga get off her butt and exercise?  I find some sort of motivation and trick myself into doing something.  Now I will be honest -- the motivation isn't always the best, but I look on the bright side that it got me moving.

I decided sometime in late winter/early spring (was there even a difference this year???) that what I wanted to do for exercise this spring and summer was to hike. I am in no way conditioned to scale Mt. Washington, or anything, but I figured that if I started small and slow I could eventually take on more advanced trails and maybe someday I could take on a mountain.

The first thing I did was buy a good pair of hiking boots and hiking socks. I then did some research on local trails as well as hiking tips and tricks.  I don't want to end up being supper for a rabid squirrel or chipmunk out there! Mi Gringito and I planned to drive all around New Hampshire starting with the easy trails and maybe working up to moderate one's by summer's end.

Fashion & function! 

All this planning got me hungry, sad to say, and I mentioned to Mi Gringito that what I really wanted more than a good walk was a huge scoop of ice-cream. I then asked him if he thought it was too ambitious of me to want to walk to the Beech Hill Farm & Ice Cream Barn. He said not at all; that it was about three miles round trip if we cut across our yard onto a hiking trail. So...yesterday afternoon, we put on our hiking boots, sprayed bug spray and sunscreen, filled a backpack with some water, an umbrella and my camera and decided to hike all the way to the barn and back.

The way there was pretty easy and uneventful except when I asked Mi Gringito if he new what poison ivy looked like and he said no. We must have been a sight trying to avoid EVERY leaf in our path. We survived so I guess we didn't run into any. That, or we've got some really tough skin.

EVERY set of leaves looked like these!

It took us about 45 minutes to get there and I don't think that chocolate ice-cream ever tasted so good to me. We sat in the air-conditioned room for a good half-hour and I wondered if Mi Gringito was dreading the hike back as much as I was! But alas, what other choice did we have? Los Suegros were in Massachusetts for the day so we really didn't have a Plan B on getting home.

Pay no attention to the hot pink blob in the middle of your screen!

Has anyone ever noticed that walking downhill is much, much easier than uphill? Oh that trek back was killer! It could have been because of the pint of chocolate brownie ice-cream that now sat like a lead weight in my stomach combined with the hill -- all I know was that we hadn't reached the trees yet and I was severely out of breath.  We made it home in one piece and actually took less time on the walk back (I think its because I was leading the retreat).  After a long and cold shower, I was aching but it felt good.  So what if all the calories I burned washed out with the ice-cream? The fact is that I voluntarily walked almost 3 miles! That's big!

4 minutes by car; 45 minutes by foot...

I hope to be able to chronicle other hikes that we decide to take this summer -- I didn't pull out the camera even once on this hike and now I regret it because it was very pretty and the butterflies were everywhere!

Stay cool, my friends! Hasta la proxima!