Thursday October 3, 2024 - King and Queen’s seat loop at Rocks State Park - Near Jarrettsville MD - 3.5 miles, just under 800 feet elevation gain

After spending our no hike day Wednesday at a casino in the Poconos, we wanted to make sure we got in a qualifying and worthy hike today.  Our overnight last night was in York, PA.  This hike, just across the border in Maryland wasn’t a lot of distance but the elevation change rate was pretty high per mile.

The rock formation that makes up ‘the seats’ is very impressive and seemingly an unlikely location.  The first third to half a mile of the trail was very steep uphill and got us to the most flashy element of the hike quickly.  My favorite part was more of the ridge line rambling and the portion that was at the very top of the knob we were hiking on and around.  It was another warm and humid hike but we had a handful of trail mix and some water at a low spot near an interpretive loop and surprisingly, we felt less taxed after that, even on the climb back up that was ahead of us.






After finishing this hike we continued on towards our last stop on this road trip, Cacapon Resort State Park in West Virginia.  Suburban Baltimore wasn’t far away after the hike and from there pretty much all the way to our cabin in WV was lousy driving.  Maryland and Pennsylvania driving couldn’t be more different. In PA people drive FAST and for the most part you stay right unless you are actively passing somebody.  Police are around but only looking for really obnoxious behavior or whatever else they watch for.  Driving in PA is all about making the best time you can and helping other people get where they are going.  Maryland, total chaos. People were in every lane going every speed, mostly slow. Waves of people slowing down at every merge ramp.  Big pieces of multi lane freeways were empty because log jams or stubborn people made clumps of traffic that were very hard to escape.  Also, there were a lot of police around which just made the crushing traffic worse..  I tried exiting I-70 (which, while annoying, wasn’t as bad as I-695/I-83 closer to Baltimore) but the side roads of MD/VA and WV are all prone to bring tiny unimproved narrow, bumpy, curvy paths.  The farther I got from Baltimore the less annoying it got but today had multiple slow downs, accidents and a lot of frustrating miles.  Already on our trip we’ve gone within 50 miles of NYC, Philly and Boston and we experienced literally zero stop and go or slow and go traffic until today.  I’ve never found Maryland to be good for anything and today certainly didn’t improve my opinion of it.

What is amazing is the resort here in WV. Tomorrow, I’ll write about this WV resort and the contrasting CT state park we stayed at earlier.

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