Patriot's Day: The Massachusetts-Only Holiday.

In honor of this pseudo-baloney day off, I'm going to go hiking in southern New England. And not some big hike someplace, but about 20 really short hikes. I'm going to make a concerted effort to highpoint all of Connecticut, all of Massachusetts with the exceptions of Nantucket and Martha's Vinyard, and most of Rhode Island with a few bonus counties in New York. Three long days of driving and about 18 km of hiking each.

The Ninja and Smelly are coming along for the fun of it. Smellz0r is all into it; I'm not sure whether Ninja is just in it for the road trip or if she'll actually enjoy hiking to the top of small anticlimactic hills in BFE Connecticut. We'll see. Expect a big trip report Monday or Tuesday. And lots of silly photos of me posing at various county highpoints.

I had to call an airforce base to get permission to go to Pine Hill in Barnstable County, MA. It was humorous. Apparently they get this all the time; the seargent I talked to seemed totally at ease with the idea of a hiker who wants to come onto the gunnery range.

So the Ninja is going to be in Albuquerque for the summer, but has to fly in from D.C. because of the training program for her internship. She was going to have her car shipped down there. That's when I stepped in and offered my (free) service of cross-country driving. Of course I'm going to highpoint the crap out of the southeastern US on the way...

But aside from the gratuitous touring I'm going to do on the way, having the car will give me the opportunity to bring a lot more of my stuff with me to New Mexico initially, and that will make everything so much more bearable.