hi hammock friends!
This past weekend, my friend Janine and i hiked counter-clockwise on the Old Loggers Path, a 28 mile trail in Loyalsock State Forest, PA. we had a swell time!
things started off with a few kerfuffles; while driving to the trailhead on Pleasant Stream road, a fairly large tree was down and there was no way to move or drive over it. filled with "can-do" attitude, we took turns sawing with a pruning saw i had in my Element and using rocks and a limb for leverage. we thought it was pretty ingenious...
so after AN HOUR of tenacious sawing, Janine went postal on the log and finally ripped it in two!
feeling pretty proud, we were on our way... that is, until a mile up the road, it was completely blocked by cement barriers and CLOSED!! arrgh!!!
all we could do was laugh (maniacally) and turn around. thanks to Janine's map reading skills, we circumvented the area and arrived at Masten in about 45 minutes. as we were talking to a man and his son who had just finished the hike, i had one of my dang tachycardia heart episodes! (they are very infrequent - it is called non-sinus tachycardia. not life-threatening but it feels awful! my heart will race at 220 BPM) man, this trip was not starting too well!
soon my happy heart settled back down and we were ready to roll.
we had expected to be hiking by 11:00 but we didn't get on the trail until 1:30!
but the rest of the trip was absolutely sublime! about 7 miles friday, 14 saturday with just light rain, and finished the hike with a quick 7 back to the car.
just as we were putting on some dry shoes - the heavy rain came! luck smiled upon the two intrepid travelers; must have been pay-back for the tree
we are going to try and lighten Janine's pack load, i carried 19 lbs with total food and water. Janine must have had around 35!
well, you know who the stronger person is!! Janine is a stud! "it was a Fitness-Pallooza!" as she would say.
since it was a rainy weekend, the eastern red efts loved it! we lost count at seeing over 35 of the incredible little creatures.
the only thing that we didn't like were the sights and sounds of fracking. the helicopter noise was disturbing at best and seeing spray paint and pink tags all over our beautiful state forest was disheartening...but mineral rights are for a different forum.
the pictures are terrible from my phone - but i know if there are no pics it never happened
thank you for reading!
http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/r...813_090415.jpg
http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/r...812_120620.jpg
all pics:
http://s489.photobucket.com/albums/r...t%2012%202011/
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