Road Trips and Hike Reports

After our breakfast we headed straight to Pine Creek Outfitters to be shuttled down the trail 16 miles, leaving our car at the North trailhead for the West Rim Trail.  Our shuttle driver was awesome.  Very talkative, full of information and she even took some pictures of us before we headed out. When our shuttle driver drove off and we were standing at the Bradley Wales overlook  the reality of being far from anything and 16 miles from our car was an interesting sensation.  With the tent (last time we had a lean to) and 2 separate sleeping bags (last time we shared the big for two bag) and about 6 liters of water between the two of us, the packs were really heavy.  The first few hours weren't too tough.  We always have a good pace and tend to cover the same amount of ground almost regardless of the different difficulty trails we do.  Still, I'm sure our backpacking pace is lower.  There are definitely some amazing views of the canyon and the creek but also a lot of more ordina

 There have been a few hikes since my last posting but I didn't write them up promptly and they are a blur now. We headed out around 4 PM to stay at the Penn Wells hotel in Wellsboro.  I don't know how me managed to go back and forth on US-6 between Scranton and Erie at least a handful of times when we lived in PA but we never actually looked around Wellsboro despite it being on US-6. The Penn Wells Hotel is a historic hotel built in 1869.  It's hard to imagine it was a large then as it is now but who knows.  Our room was reasonably clean and well set up but I somehow booked a two double bed room.  While not sharing a bed for one night is fine (maybe even a good thing once in a while), double beds are not built for modern dimensioned people!  My feet were jammed against the sheets at the foot of the bed.  But before bed we needed to eat.  I wanted to eat at the creatively named ' The Steakhouse ' across the street from the hotel but the outdoor tables were all take