I’ve always wanted to be a weekend-warrior, but let’s face it, packing up and exploring the wilderness for a long weekend isn’t that feasible for most people. It takes a fair amount of gear, knowledge of the wild places near where you live, and the foresight to reserve a campground weeks or months in advance. Some people might be able to check all of those boxes, but then when they think about how unorganized and packed-away all of their camping gear is, it suddenly becomes easier to stay at home and tell yourself you’ll clean up the garage.
The other day a friend mentioned a spot up north in Vermont that he used to camp at for free when he was younger so three of us decided on a whim that we’d do a 3-day trip in the middle of the week and earn our ‘weekend-warrior’ stripes.
The morning we planned on leaving we woke up to a forecast dominated by rain. The sky was expected to clear up around 5 p.m. so we timed our 3-hour drive around that and kept our fingers crossed for fair weather when we arrived.
A couple of Dunkin stops and plenty of rain later we pulled into our campground just as the drizzle started to give way to purple skies over Grout Pond. We set up camp as the only other campers around meandered across the water in a canoe in search of fish.
The next morning we summited Mount Equinox—which still had snow on the trail—to earn our dinner and a cold dip in the water by our campsite before we drove back to the hustle and bustle of the city.
