Without a doubt, fall is the best season for hiking (excepting hiking for turns, of course). And with that in mind, I am done with road biking for the year. Cycling really helped rehab my knee from this past winter’s use injury. But cycling does not help build strong hiking legs and my knee is not yet ready for high impact hiking. And neither is Ari since she has not been hiking this year either. So I decided Mount Percival would be an excellent short hike that is close to home with good views.

Leaf peepers are out in full force this weekend as evidenced by a completely full lot when I arrived at the parking area for Mount Percival. Two cars soon left and I was able to park and begin the hike. We passed many people on my ascent and opted to enjoy the summit views from a ledge slightly below the actual summit and the crowds.

I considered adding Mount Morgan for the standard loop but decided to stick with the plan for the sake of my legs and the pup. Descending had my quads burning with that “good pain” kind of feeling. Soon we were back where we started and heading for home. I am pleased to report that I successfully killed the puppy and she has not made a peep all night.

The Samsung TL-500 continues to impress, excepting its Scene and Smart Auto modes. Some of the photos in this report were shot using the scene and auto modes and I hit them pretty hard with processing tools to enhance the dull colors that resulted. Program mode has been the way to go and I still need to become more familiar with making manual adjustments, this camera is exceptional for manual adjustments on a P&S.

The camera does amazingly well with close subjects and handles multiple subjects at different depths exceedingly well for a compact P&S. Landscape shots seem to be hit or miss. The second photo above has not been touched up or edited and you can compare that with the colors below that are perhaps a touch too vibrant due to being hit hard with photo processing tools. I like the untouched photo above much better.

Leaf colors are very muted right now even though we are almost at peak so I think the photo above is more representative of reality. I find that the TL-500 is more true to life than my previous cameras. This has taken some adjusting as my eyes are used to cameras that have processed photos differently. A full review will be forthcoming after I have more hands on time and get some skiing photos.

After cleaning up from the hike, I drove to North Conway and picked up my newly mounted Fischer Watea 94s with Dynafit Vertical 12s. I am officially a convert. The shop tech looked admiringly at the rig and commented that it looked like a great combo. I concur. But I am still concerned that I might have went too short at 178cm because of the turned up tail which is much more turned up than I had expected. We shall see how they ski very soon.

The drive to and from North Conway sucked due to leaf pepper traffic. Worse yet, while driving through the Notch after dark, I thought I happened upon an accident. A long line of red lights with cars on the side of the road and flashers. It seemed everyone was looking off the side of the road down into a ditch. “Must be a pretty serious accident,” I thought to myself. And then I saw camera flashes.

Two dozen cars were pulled over on the shoulder of the single lane Franconia Notch Parkway after dark causing a traffic jam. Tourists were taking pictures of a moose (I would presume, I never saw what they were taking pictures of). It took all that I had to not slam on my horn to spook the moose away. Lest a provocation result in it charging the tourists, I resisted for fear of injury. Sadly, tourists have no sense of self preservation. If I never see a moose or bear again, that will be okay by me.