First family vacation!

The week before Memorial Day, Erin, W, and I went on our first real family vacation!

Well, we'd previously spent a week in Lake Placid in October, but with my parents joining us - and thus able to babysit W - so this was indeed a more "real" family vacation experience. Just Erin and me with our child. A whole new experience for all three of us. And it was a great experience.

We spent most of the week in Virginia, in Shenandoah National Park and then heading down the Blue Ridge Parkway before staying in a yurt near the charming town of Floyd. The trip started, though, with a stop in Pittsburgh for an important concert. Rather than recounting every part of the trip in detail, I wanted to write about two specific things that rank as two of the highlights of my year: seeing Pearl Jam live for the first time in 15 years, and going hiking as a family.

Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam were my favorite band in high school and college, and although I've since mostly moved on to listening to other music, they remain an important part of my life, as well as one of the best live bands I've seen. Somehow, though, I had gone 15 years without seeing them live, after concerts in 2003, 2006, and 2010 that were all among the best I've ever attended.

2010 was the last time they played in Cleveland, and their tours in the years since became much more limited, but after the show Erin and I attended on May 18 at PPG Paints Arena in downtown Pittsburgh, I feel very foolish for not having traveled to see them in the intervening years.

How, one might wonder, did we pull off going to an out-of-town Pearl Jam concert on a trip with a baby? Well, that's a story in itself!

I'd expressed an interest in going to the show for some time, but had felt uncertain due to the very expensive (resale) ticket price. I guess eventually I just had to remind myself, if I have a good chance to see one of my favorite bands live, I'm not going to regret going, no matter how much it costs. And that ended up being even more true than I'd anticipated.

It turned out that a good high school friend of Erin lives in the Pittsburgh area, and his wife works at a daycare, and a coworker of the wife was able to babysit. Convoluted? Perhaps, but leaving W with someone who (1) takes care of small children as her job and (2) was personally vouched for by the wife of Erin's friend seemed safe.

It also turned out that the house where W would be spending the evening was a ways away from downtown Pittsburgh, basically in the middle of nowhere. We got a hotel in between the two locations, and after going out for an early dinner with W (during which she drummed on metal plates as Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" played over the restaurant's sound system!), we drove to drop her off.

A very interesting thing I observed during the drive: as we came around a turn on a winding country road, I saw a turkey vulture in the road chowing down on a dead groundhog. Another groundhog, this one still alive, was at the side of the road, apparently watching. The vulture flew away and the live groundhog scampered off as we drove past.

After dropping W off, we drove back the same way. The vulture was back - and so was the groundhog. I suspect it must have been mourning its companion.

Animal behavior never ceases to fascinate.

On to the show.

We parked in a garage close to a half mile from the arena and got to our seats in time to see most of the opening set played by Australian band Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers. Those young ladies (the band has been around for 10 years but the members were 15-year-old high school students when they started it) could rock, and I really enjoyed their set. What an honor to be chosen by Pearl Jam to open for them, and I think it's very cool of Eddie Vedder and co. to have given them the opportunity.

I was obsessed with Pearl Jam from the ages of, oh, about 16 through 22. Although I continued to like them a lot, and never ceased to be aware that I'd been obsessed with them during a formative time in my life, I think in a way I forgot just how much I'd loved them.

The opening notes of Ten deep cut "Garden" filling the arena as Pearl Jam started their set quickly brought all that back.

Although not recognizable to most of the general public like "Alive," "Even Flow," "Jeremy," or "Black" are, "Garden" was a song I always really loved when I was a teenager listening to Pearl Jam's iconic debut album. It was a song I hadn't previously seen performed live, and one that doesn't get played all that often.

A really great thing about Pearl Jam concerts, and a thing that sets their shows apart from those of any other band I know, is that they vary their setlists so much from show to show, meaning that you never know what you might hear and that each individual concert really feels like a unique and significant event.

To wit, they had played another show in Pittsburgh two days prior (in retrospect, I really wish I could have attended both), and among the 26 songs played on night one and 27 songs on night two, there was only a five song overlap. This is typical for Pearl Jam. Other bands I've seen over the years (and there are a lot!) generally range from playing the same set every night of a tour to playing a lot of the same songs while varying a handful of songs from night to night. No other band I'm into does it like Pearl Jam.

And although I've complained about the paucity of shows the band has played in recent years, I have to give them credit: playing such different setlists from night to night on a tour has to take so much more work than playing mostly the same set of songs every night with a few changes, and it's really remarkable for Pearl Jam to keep doing this so far into their career and with such a huge catalog from which to draw.

 

Erin, more of a casual fan, had some interesting comments on the reactions of the audience to the performance. She mentioned watching how people would respond upon hearing the intro to a favorite song they hadn't expected to hear. As a diehard fan, this experience truly is an amazing thing about these shows. She also said that looking out across the packed arena and seeing how into the music everyone was, it almost felt like watching a cult. I think there's some truth in that. A concert like this can be very much akin to a religious experience. But unlike most cults, this is a good thing. 

There were a number of songs I was especially thrilled to hear, including long time favorites of mine like "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town" (a song I was kind of obsessed with about 25 years ago), "Immortality," and the ever familiar "Alive" (Mike McCready's live guitar solo is truly a thing to behold).

 

One that took me by surprise for how excited it made me was "Insignificance" from underrated 2000 album Binaural, which might be the Pearl Jam album that for me is most tied to a particular time in my life. 

And one song that I was not at all expecting to hear and that really brought on the emotions was "Hunger Strike" by Temple of the Dog. Had I realized ahead of time that the show fell on the anniversary of Soundgarden/Temple frontman Chris Cornell's death, I guess it wouldn't have been surprising.

In November 2016, I went to Philadelphia to see the first show of the first, and only, Temple of the Dog tour, commemorating the 25th anniversary of the grunge supergroup's one album. It was an astonishing performance. "Hunger Strike," the band's biggest hit, features Eddie Vedder sharing lead vocals with Cornell, but Vedder wasn't present for that 2016 show. The rest of the members of Pearl Jam, who were also the rest of the members (along with Cornell) of Temple, were all on the stage that night. Cornell's death the following May hit me harder than any other celebrity death has - I'd loved his music for most of my life.

Eight and a half years after that Temple show at which Chris Cornell, backed by Mike McCready, Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, and Matt Cameron, sang those familiar "Hunger Strike" vocals but Eddie Vedder was absent, I got to see Eddie Vedder, backed by Mike McCready, Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, and Matt Cameron, sing "Hunger Strike." It felt like a full circle moment and like a completion of something that had been unfinished. And given events of my life over the course of those years, that felt fitting.

This was the last show of Pearl Jam's tour, and thus they really delivered by playing an extra long set, clocking in at 2 hours and 40 minutes and ending at 11:40 pm. Perhaps not ideal when you have a lengthy drive into the country to pick up a nine-month-old from the babysitter's ahead of you, but man, was it worth it for me. It was such an epic experience and absolutely one of the best concerts I've ever seen.

It was later announced that long-time Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron (who'd been with the band since 1998 after they'd gone through four different drummers in their first eight years of existence) was leaving the band. Thus, this show had marked the final concert of the "Pearl Jam with Matt Cameron" era, making it an even more momentous occasion and making me even more glad I'd attended.

My dad told me once that one of his only regrets in life was not seeing Springsteen live when he was younger, and those are words I'll always remember. This concert was a reminder, when you get a chance to see a band that's really important to you live, you shouldn't pass it up.

And now moving from one really amazing experience to another...

Hiking as a family

Going on hikes together has been a big part of my and Erin's relationship from the start. On our second date, we went on a 4.7 mile hike in Cuyahoga Valley National Park. We got engaged on a 12 mile hike in the Adirondacks. The day after we got married, we went on a 10 mile hike in Yosemite.

Naturally, we were greatly anticipating going hiking with W, and hoping that she'd be amenable to doing it as a baby.

Early in life, she was very resistant to our attempts to get her in a wearable baby carrier, causing some worries that family hiking was something we'd have to wait quite a while to do. We gave up on the carrier for months because she became so angry whenever we put her in it.

Good friends had kindly provided an Osprey hiking backpack with baby carrier for us to use with W in our hiking endeavors. Our first practice run was on a cold winter day when we went to the Shaker Lakes Nature Center for a short hike on snowy trails. W seemed okay but not thrilled at first, then started crying, then fell asleep. Not an inspiring outcome, but it was very cold.

We took W in the hiking backpack one other time before our vacation, on a longer but still fairly short hike with some friends at a metro park. She still seemed to be trying to make sense of it all, but by the end seemed to be getting into it more.

Our first real hike as a family? It was a big jump up from those practice runs.

The day after the Pearl Jam concert, on our drive from Pittsburgh to Shenandoah, we stopped in the George Washington National Forest to hike Big Schloss, a peak on the border of West Virginia and Virginia. It's about a 4.5 mile round trip with a total elevation gain of about 1100 feet. The bulk of that comes in the first 0.8 miles - 600 feet of climbing before the trail levels out and follows a ridge to the peak.

 

It's a really cool hike, one Erin had done before and I'm glad she suggested it; the scenery as you traverse the ridge and then reach the summit was really gorgeous and also different from any other hike I've done.

A 600 foot climb over the course of 0.8 miles is pretty steep hiking, but I've done worse, and I've done much lengthier stretches that were at least that steep on other hikes. I had definitely not, however, done anything like it while carrying a baby on my back. Coming at the very start of our very first real hike with W, it was quite an introduction to hiking with a baby!

In fact, although the length and elevation profile of this hike were fairly modest by my normal standards, this was, no exaggeration, the most strenuous and physically taxing hike I've ever done. I've done all sorts of extremely strenuous distance running and cycling over the course of my life, but hiking? Hiking had never felt like this. My legs felt so heavy and I found myself basically gasping for air at points.

And you know what? It was great!

I've always found great satisfaction in challenging myself physically, testing my limits. It's something that I haven't done as much in recent years, not for lack of desire, but because my joints could no longer handle that intensity of running or even cycling. But now I found that simply walking up a mountain while carrying W on my back provided a great challenge. An unexpected benefit of parenthood.

The more important thing, of course, was whether W liked it. And she did - she seemed to love it! She babbled excitedly, looking around at the scenery and taking it all in. She also caught a couple naps over the course of the hike (one on the way up, one on the way down), looking so precious as she rested the side of her head on her little hand in the carrier.

At the top, we crossed a cool wooden bridge and reached some rocks with just breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains where we got to hang out for a little while, just the three of us, our little family.

 

On subsequent mountain hikes we've let W out of the carrier at summits, but on this particular one that seemed questionable so we kept her in the carrier. We enjoyed a nice snack, including some cheese, a W favorite.

The descent was, of course, not nearly as physically taxing, but I did find I had to be extra careful descending steep sections of trail while being so top heavy. I've since picked up a hiking pole and have been very glad to have it.

At the end of the hike I took the backpack off, set it on the ground, and looked down at W, and she looked back up at me with just the most delightful smile on her sweet little face. She looked so happy - and I felt so happy. Hiking in the mountains with my wife and daughter and discovering that my daughter enjoyed it so much was probably one of the most magical things I've ever experienced.

We did several more hikes that week, and having found how much she liked it, W became visibly excited when I'd put her in the hiking backpack and lift it up off the ground. It was just so great.

A recent Adirondacks vacation brought a lot more family hiking, and W has continued to love it. I'm looking forward to the years ahead, as she grows first into a toddler who'll provide an even greater challenge for me to carry, and then into a child who can tackle the trails herself with increasing skill and speed, just as I did in my youth. And I'll always remember Big Schloss, our first family hike on our first family vacation.