finals week, snake mountain panoramas, and wild blueberries

I am finished with all my Bread Loaf work for the semester. I have two more days of classes, one yurt to remove, and a lot of packing to do before we can hit the old dusty trail.

While the anxiety of finals weeks still grasps many on campus tightly, it has no hold on me! I turned in both of my papers early which I might decide later was a mistake, but I just could not look at them any longer. Plus, I've got plenty of my own life anxiety going on to prolong that other kind any more.

The neighbor still has not signed the easement which allows us to access our land via the existing driveway. Everyone agrees that he has said he will sign it but is really busy. I'm starting to dream up conspiracies between him and the landowner. What if they got some other offer and are trying to get us to back out? I'm trying to stay calm, but early next week we're supposed to be dropping off the yurt on our way home. Also, we've got a lot of money already invested in health department evaluation fees, appraisals, etc. for this property. Also, we love it.

We're carrying on nonetheless and it's great that we have fun business going on here in the next few days before we hit the road. The preview:
Saturday - Middlebury Brewfest, then Bread Loaf's Our Town
Sunday - work and packing
Monday - Class, then disassembling the yurt with Keith's help (thank God), then Kate's birthday celebrations at Flatbread! Delicious!
Tuesday - both classes, then hopefully one last hurrah with friends
Wednesday - collect professors car and guinea pigs and hit the road

Last night we celebrated my finished papers by eating at Two Brothers Tavern and then having some beers with Keith. I got the hiccups there which lasted until I fell asleep and I got them back during our hike of Snake Mountain today. We hiked for about an hour, came up over a knoll and BAM! We saw this:

What you see is farmland, Lake Champlain, and the Adirondack Mountains. We're pretty damn sure, if not certain, that you can even see Whiteface Mountain, near Lake Placid, which Bryan and I hiked up, and up, and up two summers ago when we vacationed there with the Manns. Pretty spectacular view, eh?

We're hoping to hike another one before we leave that has a 360 degree view.  Also, we stopped at the wild blueberry fields that the National Forest Service maintains and had a few blueberries on our way to our campground duties at Silver Lake the other day: