Road Trips and Hike Reports

Thankfully I woke up Thursday feeling 100% normal and well. We both slept well and the morning was sunny and bright but not as stuffy or still as it was for the hike the day before.  We went to a bagel place we'd been to years ago here in Harrisburg for breakfast.  The drive to the trailhead was only 50 minutes and about 20 of that was along the Pennsylvania Turnpike which I really like.  In actuality half of my 20 miles on the Turnpike was a single lane construction zone but there was no backup at the merge point so it wasn't too slow.  The trail's starting point was just a nicely widened section of shoulder on a road with very little signage or notable features.  This hike was interesting in so many ways.  First, literally the first or 2nd step off of he road brings you to the split where you go left or right for the loop.  And regardless of if you go left or right, the first few dozen steps of the trail for us were going to be on rounds of trees placed to provide somewh

 This was the start of our much anticipated 3 night escape to Harrisburg PA.  Harrisburg hasn't been (and still isn't) a favorite place for us even just among bigger PA cities but it is near a lot of good hiking opportunities and less stressful than Philly or Pittsburgh.  So we booked at the lovely Best Western Premier Central and I queued up several possible hikes to do on the way here, once here and on the way home.  What I hadn't planned 2 months ago when I booked this trip was getting my COVID vaccine the day before the trip started.  I was able to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at Rite Aid (albeit a Rite Aid 35 miles from home) on Tuesday morning.  I booked it on Friday so that was a very short wait and the setup process and everything about getting the vaccine setup and administered was super easy at RiteAid.com.   Side bar on my vaccine experience.  Anybody who knows me well knows that I reallllly hate shots and blood draws. I had one case of passing out durin

This was another time killer hike. After playing video games etc in the morning I was running out of things to do so I decided to get out and go on a time consuming drive to fill my day up.  After a little googling I found the sculpture garden in Rome, a city near Utica that I'd never been to about 100 miles east of Rochester.  Since I didn't head out until 2 PM I took the Thruway (I-90) on the trip East.  Traffic moved very well but it was busy enough that it wasn't a relaxing or fun drive.     Surprisingly, the sculpture garden is almost entirely on the spacious perimeter grounds of an unfinished industrial park called Griffiss Business and Technology Park.  Google's idea of where the sculpture garden is included driving some nearly abandoned or not yet fully finished roads through empty and barren parts of the industrial park.  I eventually came back out to a main road and found my way to an actual parking area for the sculpture garden.  The park has a fascinating hi