7/9/10 Have you ever rock scrambled? If not, you are totally missing one of the coolest things you can do. Plus, I like to believe it’s a lot of exercise that doesn’t feel annoying and boring like typical exercise.
On day 9 we were in New Paltz, New York where my college roommate, Dawn lives with her husband, Gil, and their kids, Tess (6) & Gray (3). We got in Thursday night rather late, yet somehow Brad and Gil still went for a bike ride Friday morning at 7am. Gil told Brad it was a “flat ride.” Ha ha! Brad discovered that Shawangunk Mountain Range flats aren’t remotely like Katy, Texas flats. They may not have gone up and down and up and down but they did go up – just in a flat way. Apparently they rode a 31 degree slope most of the way. Brad loved it, but had to take a breather at one point. His effort earned him an honorary partial friendship with Gil (this is a big deal. )
We had a great breakfast in the town of New Paltz then Dawn took all of us up to Mohonk Mountain House. OMG, this place was gorgeous. The grounds were well groomed and very, very extensive. There was a huge evergreen maze for the kids to wander, towers scattered here and there, special places for the day hikers (non-hotel guests), a nice lake, boating, carriage rides and other stuff. Other than feeding the fish in the lake, we bypassed most of these trappings and strutted over to the “rock scramble.” What’s a rock scramble? Basically, it’s crawling up, climbing over, crouching under and through humongous boulders and other good-sized rocks to reach a point some kilometers away, in this case a tower way up on a mountain top. I LOVED this.
Grace took off like a bat out of hell (even though she had never, ever, done anything like this) and Caroline, Tess and I scrambled to keep up with her. Dawn and Brad stayed back, moving a little more slowly to help Gray along. Gray was a real trooper, never complaining and often singing the song “I’m a great rock scrambler.” Caroline was a little whiny but she got through and I’m sure if we did it again she’d be fine. I actually think if we had just let Grace go she would have beaten us to the top by several minutes. I need to find a place in Texas that does this! (yeah, right!)
We were sweatier than all get out when we made it to the top and then we had to climb what felt like 300 steps to the top of the tower. Those steps were the killers for me. The rocks were nothing. Once at the top we could see a massive rainstorm coming in across the forests below. Waaaay cool. We managed to speedily move ahead of the rain and didn’t get dumped on until we got to our cars.
Back at Dawn’s we chatted up a storm with Gil, who had finished up his work. The kids played and played and we all had a tough time parting. We stood in the driveway saying goodbye for too long and agreed we would make plans to hit Acadia together next year!
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