Saturday January 13th 2024 - Hike of Shitaka trail, Rothrock State Forest near Reedsville PA - 3.25 miles, 350 feet elevation gain

This was a hike on the way to our long weekend in Grantsville PA (near Hershey).  Conditions weren’t great since it was above freezing but had snowed.  We drove up the snowy sloppy dirt road until it started to seem sketchy which was just a little short of the trailhead anyway.  Turns out we could have driven the last little bit for sure but it looked intimidating and better safe than sorry.  The very beginning of the trail was REALLY wet, like a mini swamp.  Brian’s hiking boots are meshy and open and he started his hike with wet feet.  The trail did get better but there were other wet spots also.  Considering the conditions we did well to get any hike in at all.








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

July 30, 2024 - Canadian Cruise Vacation Day 11 - Boston to home

Image
Our dinner at Legal Sea Foods went very well. Everybody enjoyed the food and especially the deserts.  We played Yahtzee and had over-priced beers from a fun self-service beer tap thing in the hotel lobby.  Brian took DayQuil and was finally able to sleep well. We got up nice and early and had breakfast in the insanely busy hotel lobby.  There really wasn't much else to do this morning so we were in our rental car before 9 am and headed out of town.  We were able to (with effort and Brian talking to a manager) get a late checkout for my parent's room.  This somewhat cut down their long wait at Logan airport.  They took a taxi to the airport and hopefully are enjoying their flights as much as is possible. Our drive home went very well.  The Mass Pike was busy but there weren't a lot of annoying people and the rental Honda Accord is a good road trip car except for the loud road noise.  We bought the last few cat supplies when we got home and are no...
Read more

Sunday December 27th - Day 7 of fly and drive trip to Oregon - Idaho Falls Idaho to Thermopolis WY

Image
Today was an exciting and scenery filled day.  I woke up to thankfully only a few more inches of snow more than were there when I got to the hotel in Idaho Falls.  The roads in town were awful just like they were when I arrived the night before so I was concerned that the entire day could be difficult.  Amazingly, the highways improved dramatically, seemingly at the city limits.  I had hoped to go through Cody Wyoming today to visit the museum my friend from Oregon recommended but ID-31 had a chain control in effect so I stayed on US-26 which took me further south and added miles both.  I did get to go over top of 9500 foot tall Togwotee pass and I had a good walk along the river in Dubois WY.  The photos do a pretty good job of showing the types of scenery I experienced today.  Other than than snowmobile recreation users at very high altitudes there were virtually no other cars.  I mean many minutes between even seeing one oncoming vehicle and vi...
Read more

Sunday June 28 - Conservation trail at Hunters Creek Park - Near Aurora/Buffalo NY - 5 miles about 450 feet elevation gain

Image
This hike had such glowing reviews on Alltrails and some of them mentioned that it wasn't very wet or muddy and it was very well marked and beautiful. After a nice long dry spell we had a wet few days and going someplace minimally muddy was appealing.  I think the Alltrails comments were well founded.  There were a lot of slightly muddy spots but that is as much because this section of the conservation trail is very popular with mountain bikes as anything.  The trail started out with a good little climb along a gorge over a creek (Hunters creek I guess).  While I was glad to be out on the trail, it was pretty warm and humid and part of me wasn't really into hiking.  I kind of power walked up the hill leaving Brian a bit behind. As the hike progressed my mood improved somewhat.  The trail mostly was near the creek and eventually was impressively high above the creek but there were spots where the trail was out in the open briefly and at the point where we t...
Read more