This Autumn, You Are With Us

I watched you grow up, now I watch you grow old

This Autumn, You Are With Us

October 21, 2021

It’s been 2810 days, or you can say about 7 years and 8 months since the first day we met Jennifer, Tiffy, Tiru, and Tissue. Also exactly 2712 days ago was the first day we met Tinkerbell. We had to part ways because Jennifer and her pups moved to San Francisco in 2017. Our last hike together was at a no name trail near San Gabriel mountain where I dropped and cracked my phone screen at the very beginning of the hike.
There were some short reunions whenever they popped back into LA, but was never this long and gave me such a bittersweet feeling like this time in fall of 2021.

One big thing we yet to figure out is travel food for human on the east coast. I highly relied on Denny’s diner in the past because they covered the entire area we would travel to, almost like a gas station, you never need to google about their locations ahead until your car is unhappy. We assume there will be one nearby whenever we book a hotel, Denny’s diners open 24 hours, same menu across all the stores so we always know what we can expect, this consistency saved me so much time during traveling.

The next day the sky was gloomy as we originally expected, the surprise sunshine a day ago was a lovely surprise. We woke up at 5:30am and started our morning walk at the Basin Cascade trail around 7:00. Without sun, fall color looked dull yet still beautiful.

Basin Cascade Trail

The Basin trail was a very short stroll, we slowly followed the Pemi trail south 1.5 miles to the Flume Gorge Visitor Center. (For Quentin was maybe plus one more mile because he ran back to the parking lot to find our car key). The Flume Gorge was one of the coolest trails here but also the only one I know that’s not pet friendly. The entrance was carefully guarded, all the tickets were sold out for the day.

After a short rest, we realized the Indian Head trail is on the other side of the visitor center, if we want to hike that area, we will have walk all the pups all the way down to the trail head (1 mile), hike Indian Head and connect to Mount Pemigewasset trail back down to where we are (around 3.7 miles), later walk back to the Bison (another 1.5), at the end of the day this trip will come up to be more than 10 miles. The ranger suggested that we go to Mount Pemigewasset and do an out and back instead, so we did, or sort of did.

We attempted to hike up Mount Pemigewasset trail until I called it off, when the time we staggered down this more than 1,200 ft elevation hike was already past noon.

The Little Grille

We came to the little grille, which used to be a train depot. They offer great BBQ, the interior décor was fun and colorful against bright yellow walls.

Mt. Washington Auto Road

We took the challenge (or should I say V did, we all chickened out) to drive up to the Mt. Washington summit, unlike what’s stated on their official website, we received our “This Car Climbed Mt. Washington” bumper stickers during entry not after fishing the quest. Although we are driving a rental car, we requested 1 sticker each to bring home, so we can put it on our car later, the one which never even went to New Hampshire.

Going uphill was not difficult for us but very difficult to watch those people who were driving down on the outer lane. We could see their wheels riding on the edge of the cliff, below that I could only see clouds. It’s complicated to feel this frightened but also stunned by the view going higher and higher until clouds are underneath us. We arrived at the top at 3:00 pm. It was crowded but the high altitude made all sound sources less powerful, it was very quiet.

We left Tiru in the car this time to just explore with TT, Tissue and Tinkerbell, arriving at 3:00pm turned out to be the perfect timing because they stopped letting people come in, and visitors had to leave the summit by 4:45pm. Without having other cars coming up, we didn’t have to be the one riding on the edge of the cliff, going down was smooth and less scary until we realized V forgot to put the gear at L1, we were riding on the break for too long, and the car started to smell after a few minutes. V quickly pulled the car to the closest resting spot, but being on a slope didn’t help our car to stop, especially when the break was no longer working. Our giant SUV kept inching forward until we shoved 2 huge rocks in front of the wheels. Quentin loves telling this experience, he could never get tired of telling people this story. We brought those two life saving rocks with us just in case, and let our car rest regularly all the way down, nothing bad happened again.

“The sticker should say “This Car Came Down Mt. Washington” instead of “This Car Climbed Mt. Washington”, driving down is definitely way harder”

Said V.

“If without frightening experiences, it’s not our trip, we always have some out of ordinary thrillers.”

Said Jennifer.

I silently agreed.

To bring this trip to a perfect ending, we made our last stop at the bottom of the Mt. Washington for pictures just like lots of other people did. TT, Tiru, Tissue and Tinkerbell all fell asleep immediately after we hit the road back to Massachusetts. Tired doggies are good doggies.

Oh, remember our life saving rocks? We forgot to drop them off before leaving, so now I have two giant alpine rocks sitting in my garden, please don’t come for me, we didn’t mean to steal rocks from a national forest.

Jennifer, V and their pups stayed with us for another 2 days, time flew by. I was also working, a week felt long and also short at the same time. The last day we went on a walk without knowing they would all get muddy, but we also figured out Tinkerbell would play fetch with anything, even a pine cone, so I guess it’s a win win? Jennifer and V were kind enough to take TT to a self service dog wash along with Tissue and Tinkerbell before departure.

I am notoriously bad at exposing my soft side. I didn’t give her a hug, I didn’t tell her how much I will miss them, and how much I missed us.

See you very soon Tiru, Tissue, Tinkerbell and Tiffy.

Jennifer and I both left California a year ago in fall, one Michigan the other Massachusetts.

They flew in on October 6th, it was so strange to be with the family again, it’s almost like we teleported to the past, nothing has changed, we knew each other so well down to the pattern of how to take care of each other’s furry friends.

Our adventure to New Hampshire started on the 8th. The rental company ran out of normal SUVs so we got a giant 9 seat GMC Yukon free of upgrade charges. We drove up on Friday night to Ashland, NH. Surprised by the 0 reception around the inn we stayed.

The White Mountain National Forest area wasn’t like any of the national parks or forests we visited on the west coast. Even with a 360 degree angle vibrant autumn color at peak display, we were experiencing reasonable tourist rush in the morning, not like a theme park level of crowd.

At 9am the next morning we were not able to enter the parking lot to hike Mount Lafayette, presumably it’s one of the most famous hikes. The person who helped to redirect visitors gave us some directions and asked us a strange question:

“Do you have an idea what to expect here?”

To this day I have no idea why he phrased it like that or what he meant by that.

“Eh…we are just here to see fall foliage and maybe hike around?”

Quentin answered awkwardly after a few seconds of pause.

Artist’s Bluff Loop

We followed the given map to the Artists Bluff trail. It’s just a few minutes down the road, and the parking lot was completely empty. I thought maybe most of the people just decided to stop at the first parking lot they hit when driving from the town, so that’s why the previous one was packed?

The walk at Artist’s Bluff was easy and nicely shaded, we quickly realized choosing to hike into the woods probably will not give us good views of the fall color. But lucky enough, without extra expectations, we came to a steep cliff vista point, which granted us one of the most spectacular views of the trip.

About a year ago I saw pictures of these multi colored Front Range Ruffwear harness Jennifer bought for all her pups, I wasn’t impressed, but somehow on that day they looked way too damn cute in person, it’s such a huge bummer those harnesses are from a limited edition, I can’t even find a scrap on eBay anymore 😢.

I know I am probably wrong, but White Mountain area is another reception dead zone that makes me convinced that there’s no cell phone reception anywhere in the entire New Hampshire state. Without service, we dropped a navigation pin at a random location north of the national forest, hopefully to find a single restaurant to have lunch.

Presidential Range Rail Trail

We found our second stop at a nearby cherry pond trial after I had my first Subway sandwich in my life. Without knowing what to expect, we started to follow this wide open/flat/family friendly path. This trail is perfect for bikers too, the down side is we often have to herd our pups to the side to let bikers pass.

Although the forecast told us it will be cloudy, the sky was clear, sunshine enhanced the saturation of the fall color.

Tiru gave up walking again and we started to take turns carrying her. I didn’t get to help that day but vividly remember how we four human lifters passed her around when she was still 10 years old.

We brought some apples we got from apple picking the first day they arrived in Mass. It was refreshing to snack on apples while walking in this surreal autumn dream land. Jennifer and her girlfriend V were both surprised we think different varieties of apple have completely different flavor or texture. It didn’t take us too long to transform them into apple tasting experts at an orchard that offers more than 7 different types of apples. For the record, my favorite last year was Empire apples, this year I found something new called Smitten.

This walk surprised us with an old railroad and a dramatic pond view against fall colors that I was unable to capture with my camera. Quentin took several pictures at the split of the tracks, he told me he wished we could take some silly trolley problem pictures, but he wasn’t sure if Jennifer and V will understand that kind of humor. I wasn’t sure either so we ended up never bringing that up.

TT is one of those kids that takes impact on peer influences immensely. A finicky eater like him would gobble a chuck celery if Tiru was also getting a piece. In most cases, the best practice will be to separate dogs while they eat. By doing so, you as a pet parent will create a zero pressure dining zone for your dogs, it helps them to be calm without building food guarding behaviors. When it comes to TT, I shamefully shove his bowl into the middle of the battlefield (ie. less than one inch away from where Tinkerbell and Tiru are eating), that helps TT to finish his food more than ever. I love having all the girls around, besides teaching TT to bark at the door, they are great sisters.