Ringing in the New Year in the Forest

I know it’s not much of a celebration, but I’m pretty low key when it comes to holidays. It was really Fred’s idea to camp out on New Year’s Eve, but I had been planning to spend the night in the forest, if I didn’t have anything better to do. I considered the shindig at MacDaddy’s, but I’m not much for crowds.

So, Fred and I spent the night on the south side of Hillfield Rd, pretty close to the Weetock trail. I slept in my Haven hammock … again. It’s about all I sleep in, anymore. I mostly just draped my rain fly over the ridge line to avoid a recurrence of the damp sleeping bag syndrome. I was glad to have the rainfly staked to the ground on either side of me, as the wind kicked up overnight and that provided me some cover from the chilly wind. There were no mosquitoes! 😉

After we finally broke camp around 11:00 on New Year’s Day, we unloaded our packs at our vehicles and went for a short hike, just to enjoy the mild, sunny weather. It was breezy, but it was a beautiful day to be in the woods. I had to peel off layers to keep from overheating.

It was a pretty uneventful, but pleasant trip. I wish I had something exciting to report, but we did not encounter any bears or alligators. I didn’t have any snakes crawl into my sleeping bag. I don’t even think I got my shoes wet. On a recent exploratory walk on the other side of HW58, I got soaking wet and encountered two friendly hunting dogs (after Fred met up with me) that hung out with us for a while, as we explored off-trail.