i went camping at acadia national park over the weekend! it was a mit outing club trip with 80 other people. my group drove up to maine friday afternoon (it was my first time visiting the state!), set up our tent, and went to bed to get ready for outdoorsy activities throughout the weekend. here are some pictures:
our campground! there was a bathhouse with showers which was very convenient
on saturday we went kayaking on long pond!
some loons we saw while kayaking
i got a lobster roll; kind of pricey at ~$30, but it was sooo good. it was also better than the roll i got at quincy market back in boston lol
we hiked beech mountain saturday afternoon; it was a pretty flat hike but there was an amazing view at the top
a brownie boat i got after hiking. acadia was definitely pretty touristy compared to other mitoc trip destinations. the ice cream was still delicious though.
the lighthouse by our campground. unfortunately i missed the sunset, but it was still super pretty
it was raining on saturday, but we went biking anyway. we went around eagle pond (or lake? can’t remember what name it was exactly) and jordan pond. there were some amazing views of the mountains
seafood pizza i got after biking. after getting back to the campground i mostly stayed in the tent and read until going to bed
(tangent: i have so many more photos i want to share, but transferring images off of my phone is somewhat tedious. i usually draft these posts in notion, but notion has a file size limit which i reached when writing this post. airdropping isn’t the greatest because i get the images as heic, which i then need to convert. i probably have to find a better solution to this soon)
one of my favorite parts of mitoc trips is meeting adults and just hearing how their lives go after graduating. mitoc members tend to skew towards grad students/alumni, so i often find myself going on trips with people much older than i am. it’s interesting to see what paths people took after college, and it’s also reassuring to see that adults interact with each other the same way i do with friends right now.
i also learned a lot about camping. probably the most important lesson i learned was what kind of food to pack. we brought a lot of canned items (soup, beans, etc.); unfortunately, we brought the wrong kind of fuel for our stove (we got liquid fuel but the stove needed gaseous propane). this resulted in us not being able to cook food very efficiently—we had to borrow stoves or use the campfire (which was very slow). i also found that it’s hard to get a lot of calories or protein from eating canned, liquidy things—especially when they’re lukewarm. what i probably should have done was bring non-perishable items that did not need to be cooked, such as bread, peanut butter, fruit, or jerky. i also won’t make the stove mistake again in the future.
i’m leaving for the solar car race next week, and i’m a little bit stressed about how fast june has gone. i’m visiting a friend outside of boston this weekend, and when i get back i won’t have much time to pack and prepare. my plan is to make a to-do list of items (i stopped being diligent about this earlier this year), since i think i will be overwhelmed otherwise. i’ll also try to stay calm.
lyricist 