hiking

Bar Harbor/ Acadia National Park

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After getting rained on at Baxter State Park we decided to head to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park.  The weather was only slightly better, but we had a hotel instead of a tent!  We decided to drive the loop road and drove to the top of Cadillac Mountain first.  It was so foggy and misty that there were no views at all.  There was a camera man at the summit taking videos for the 100th anniversary of the park – watch HERE – you can’t miss me with my bright pink rain jacket – LOL!  I’m taking the photo you see below left.

summit of Cadillac Mtn
FOGGY

We decided to come back the next day because the weather was supposed to be slightly better.  There was really no point in driving the road when you could only see a bit in front of the car because the fog was so thick. We ended up heading to our hotel to shower and then went to grab something to eat.  We were pretty tired so we settled into the hotel and hoped for better weather the next day.

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The Fair-Weather Highpointer

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First, let me start this post by saying I GOT TO MEET THE SUMMIT CHICKS!!! I GOT TO MEET THE SUMMIT CHICKS!!!!  🙂

Let me backtrack:  I have been using the Summit Chicks’ blog for quite some time as a reference for my own high pointing road trips.  I was so surprised and excited when they contacted me shortly after I started my blog and asked if I would want to hike a highpoint with them – ummm YES!!!!  🙂  They found me because I left a comment for another blogger who was starting out highpointing and I suggested she check out their blog.  After chatting back and forth we decided Katahdin in Maine would be the peak we would go after – how exciting!  The Summit Chicks (Raina and Jill) put together the whole trip – it was in the works for MONTHS because you have to snag a campsite about 4 mths ahead of time for Baxter State Park.  They have a ton of crazy rules and the girls did a lot of research to figure out what would be the best option to hike Katahdin.

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My 2nd Trail Run

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I signed up to do a local trail run for a charity event with my sister and a friend Tracy on Sunday – we woke up and arrived early to register the day of the event and I knew the parking lot was small so I wanted to make sure we got a decent spot.  The run was going to be a 10k – what I didn’t know was that the route would take us up every single steep incline that was in the forest.

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The Sensory Trail and the Sunflower Cemetery

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SUPERBOWL SUNDAYYYYYY!!!! As I know absolutely NOTHING about football (is that un-American?) I decided I would much rather spend the day outside.  I called up a friend, grabbed JoJo and off we went to explore Blue Marsh Lake.  There are many trails around the lake, but the map is very basic and doesn’t have a lot of the connecting trails on it.  I love kayaking at Blue Marsh, but am not very familiar with the hiking trails so we decided to be adventurous, pick a trail and see where it would take us.  We drove around almost the entire lake before we found a spot where we could park – a lot was blocked off for some reason or had a ton of snow piled up in the parking areas.  We finally found a place to park and according to the map there was a loop trail near by called the Sensory Trail.  We walked over to check it out and saw the trail was only 1/4 mile long – bummer!  So we did the loop twice and sort of explored around the area a bit but it didn’t take us long at all.  We hopped back in the car – determined to go for a longer hike than that and found a parking pull off that was clear of snow.  We got out and started hiking, following the tracks of others.  The snow is only a few inches deep now as we had a warm spell and most of the snow from the blizzard has melted away (no snowshoes needed for this trip!)  We wandered around the trails and came to some fields – we started around the perimeter of one and came to an area covered with dried up sunflowers – I hiked part of a nearby trail in the summer that had TONS of blooming sunflowers – I never knew they were there before and it was so amazing to see.

What the area looks like in the summer – so pretty! 🙂

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FINALLY got to use my Snowshoes!!

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Over the weekend I FINALLY was able to test out my new snowshoes.  The snow was PERFECT – I was able to float right on top of about 2 feet of snow while Kevin, who doesn’t have any, sunk in – up to his knees at some spots!  We were visiting his parents so Joey and I went for a walk in their woods.  It was so beautiful – the only tracks were those of wildlife so it was very easy to walk around on the mostly undisturbed snow.  I have to say it was sort of fun to take my snowshoes off and see how far I sunk in without them!  🙂

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#optoutside

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I’m sure you have heard about the #optoutside movement that REI started this year – instead of spending your day inside, fighting crowds during Black Friday, REI urged people to spend their day outside enjoying nature instead.  Here in PA I couldn’t have asked for a better day – it was actually in the 60’s with zero chance of rain – who WOULDN’T want to be outside on a day like that??  PERFECT hiking weather!!

I asked my sister if I could take my nephew on a hike and my Mom decided to join me as well!  We decided to check out some trails that we haven’t done in a long time – the first was on Pumping Station Rd.  We parked and walked about a mile round trip along the road, but could never find where the trail went into the woods – it was strange!  We did see a crazy looking boulder that looked like a giant whale which was hard to get a picture of because of the brush in front of it.  It seemed like everything had private property signs posted so we went back to the car to try to find some other nearby trails.

Branch Manager and Assistant Branch Manager

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