Van People (Days 7-9)

Favorites: Attacked by bird alien, hiking Franconia Ridge, Echo Lake, Pollys Pancakes. 

Monday Day 7: we sat in mcdonalds and uploaded stuff to the interwebs  Ate lunch at mcd. Drove to New Hampshire. Camped in the white mountains. Cooked sausage and mashed potatoes and roasted snores over the fire. We were attacked by a bird alien in the middle of the night. 

Tuesday Day 8: woke up. Ate bagels and pop tarts. Drove to trailhead. Hiked the Franconia loop. 9 miles, 3900 ft elevation gain in 5 hours. Ate sandwiches and beef jerky on top of Mt. Lafayette. Drove to Echo Lake swam and ate leftovers from yesterday for dinner. Slept at Walmart. 

Wednesday Day 9: drove to Polly's Pancake Parlour for some pancakes and real maple syrup. Did a maple sugar house tour. Ate some cheese at the Cabot factory. Did the Ben and Jerrys factory tour. Washed the van. Ate noodles for dinner at a park in VT. Drove through the Adirondacks (so many pretty lakes!) to Utica NY. Slept at Walmart. 

So we were sleeping at a primitive campsite all by ourselves out in the White Mountains in New Hampshire somewhere. We were excited to be sleeping somewhere not at Walmart! Everything was going great, we had a great dinner and some s'mores around the campfire and then went to bed. We were sound asleep when we started hearing the weirdest noises. Literally sounded like an alien from the movie Signs was running around our car. The noise was moving around our car so fast but we couldn't see anything! We heard it running around on our roof and trying to find a way into the trunk (where our food was). At first I thought maybe it was a porcupine or a skunk. I have no idea what either of those sound like so ya. I think it may have been a bird, but we never saw it. I eventually honked the horn and it went away. We went back to sleep but a few minutes later it was back! Started the car and that scared it off for a little longer, but it came back again. Eventually we just gave up and let it fuss around until it finally gave up. It came back a couple more times during the night but we were too over it to do anything about it. We never saw what it was, and tried to look up animal sounds afterward to figure it out, but it's still a mystery. Needless to say we didn't mind sleeping in the Walmart parking lot the next night.