Porcupine Ridge Groundhog Day

Send off, feat. Foz & Finn

Lunch (chile kibble?)

CAT TEAM PIT TEAM LETS GOOO

One big litterbox

Nobody else wanted to get up so it was just Chid and I. Cadillac Mountain is the first to see the sunrise on the East Coast, so this was a must. When Chid’s alarm went off at 4 I was instantly awake and ready to go. It didn’t take us long to hit the road. Our drive was 40 minutes, but I added 5 by checking for a parking spot at the trailhead (the roads are one-way here so I had to loop around). We agreed to jog the beginning, at least on the flat. We were hucking up the hill for a bit when we hit the first mile and I did a little math. We’d averaged 12 minute pace for that mile, and we still had 2 more to go. Assuming we’d slow down as it got steeper and seeing that the sky was already turning pink, I decided that the only way to make it in time was to keep running. I ran the whole way up and got some super weird looks. The first time you hit the road the trail sort of swoops down away from it, but I got confused and ran on the rocks on the other side of the road before figuring it out. Anyways I got to the top and was surprised to see that you could literally drive to the top and park there, and that the summit was packed with foreign tourists. Everyone was giving me weird and/or dirty looks, most likely due to the fact that I was shirtless, sweating a lot and breathing heavy. When I got there the sun hadn’t crossed the horizon yet, so I sat on a rock and waited for Chid. This one Indian man began blasting this obnoxious music and slowly panning his phone, videoing the people rather than the sunset? He did this for the entire 10 minutes it took for Chid to arrive, at which point we moved to the other side of the summit where there weren’t any people. I guess that dude didn’t know how to add music to a video later so he was filming for the entire duration of the song. Chid arrived just as the sun had begun to cross the horizon

Anyways Chid and I got our picture taken in the matching track club flannels by some dude who knew his way around a camera. I realized shortly after that we’d made a grave mistake: what we thought would go hard (matching track club flannels) actually just made us look gay. When I told Chid that, we both immediately whipped the flannels off and asked someone else for our photo lmao. They did a decent job but it didn’t matter because we were having too much fun. We began trying to take the most epic timer pictures we could, including but not limited to still shots, poses, jumps and I even did a split. We got some good ones before taking a lap to read all the informational signs (were intellectuals). We wanted to see if any of the original hotel buildings were left, but were surprised to find a summit gift shop instead. I bought a sticker, Chid bought some postcards and we both bought a bottle of old soaker blueberry soda for $2.50 each. It came in a glass bottle and the only ingredients were cane sugar and blueberry concentrate. It slapped so unbelievably hard. We went to use the bathroom quick before heading down and some dude walks right up to the urinal next to me and starts the conversation: “so did you hike up?”. We exchanged some words and he told me that he was with a group training for a ride across Italy in a few weeks. When I went to wash my hands I saw in the mirror that he was in a full bike kit

We took a slightly different way down expecting it to connect to the trail. It became mossier and more wooded until eventually, it was a silly little game trail between decently thick and low-branched trees. By the time we met up with the other trail, it looked like we’d just crawled directly out of a bush. The weird thing was there was an info sign higher up so it was an official trail. I wonder how many tourists took that only to require rescue because they were lost

Chid took a 5 min Power Nap on the way back. When we got back, the others had long finished breakfast and were cooking bacon for us. Chid and I scorfed down the eggs and then we ran out of propane fuel for the stove. While the bacon went from cooking on a stove to cooking in the sun, I took a little nap myself. It didn’t last long and soon we were packing up for the next hike

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Eric “Stray Cat” Nowak

Cadillac Acadian Sunrise Hike via North Ridge, feat. Chid

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Porcupine Ridge Groundhog Day

Send off, feat. Foz & Finn

Lunch (chile kibble?)

CAT TEAM PIT TEAM LETS GOOO

One big litterbox

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