Day 4.273: Pittsfield State Forest

Our camping adventure did not take us far - about forty miles to the east, just over the border into Massachusetts. Pittsfield State Forest is a gorgeous spot - with some great views and a stunning pond at the summit.

It is definitely a different experience camping at this time of year.  We had to pitch the tent in the dark surrounded by dark trees and lots of empty pitches.  The fire was an essential part of the experience.  Keeping us warm in the mornings and evenings, even though the middle of the days were rather warm.  We also used it to toast bagels and marshmallows even though we took a stove for most of our cooking needs.

The fire also provided us with a great dawn display on Sunday morning.  Nothing like generating your own atmospherics!

I'm tempted to say that we'll be back - and I'd certainly be happy to visit again - but the truth of the matter is there are so many beautiful places to visit around this area that we're quite likely to try somewhere new.

Day 4.272: Wild temperature swings

No great revelation of photographs from our camping trip, but at least I can edit my post this evening - rather than just emailing it in and then finding it has ditched most of my text because it couldn't work out how to paginate a very-long-hyphenated-phrase - so that's good.

Our camping adventure featured some fairly huge temperature variations. From sitting around the fire for much-needed warmth at dusk and dawn (and shivering in bed in between in lots of layers),

to roasting on top of a mountain just a few hours after dawn.

I capped the hot-weather experience off by running the lawn mower round the yard when we arrived home in the early afternoon - about half grass-cutting and half leaf-gathering - all hot-work.

More details on our adventure to come, but we are home and had a good evening with our friends at our church gathering and are appreciating that tomorrow is a holiday so we can get going slowly.

Day 4.271: Cold night, busy day

It was cold last night. Wake-up-and-put-on-a-coat-then-try-to-get-back-to-sleep cold. Actually, the kids did fine in their sleeping bags. We're all wearing more tonight and it's milder so we should be OK.

Today we rode on a scenic railway, visited a botanical garden and drove up to the top of the park we are camping in to find a great view.

A few more hours of fun tomorrow and the back to get some photos together and write a better formatted blog post on the computer.

Day 4.270: Forest Camp

If this picture looks black then you have an impression of our experience setting up camp and having soup.

Hopefully tomorrow we will see what the site looks like and start some more visible adventures!

Day 4.269: Time unlapsed

I was forced to replace my much-loved Canon point-and-shoot, so naturally I replaced it with a new Canon point-and-shoot. It's tiny and has some cool features. One is the capability of shooting at high frame-rates to capture slow-motion video. Since I have posted so many sped-up time-lapse videos over the years, it seems appropriate to do the opposite.

The subject matter isn't super-exciting, but here's my first experiment in slow-motion video!



EDIT: I tried out YouTube's new video editing feature to steady out my slow motion camera-shake. Quite effective I think - compare and contrast!