Road Trips and Hike Reports

Sikeston was a brief overnight, not a destination.  Still, between the novel dinner the night before and the surprisingly great breakfast place the next morning, we could do worse.  Except in terms of weather. The cold rain was really coming down as we headed out of Missouri and into Illinois on US-60. The goal for the day was to get to the state park in KY.  But the lousy weather made Harrah's casino in Metropolis IL seem like a good diversion.  It was a fun stop over and we got on the road in time to do what needed to be done.  Strangely, in the 3 years I lived in TN, my visits to Kentucky were always near I-24 or I-65 or maybe once or twice along US-31.  I had never had any reason to go very far on Kentucky's parkways.   As I understand it, when the Interstate system was being planned, Kentucky didn't get nearly the network of limited access roads they hoped for and the parkways were their solution to filling out the road network of KY.  Thi...

This post is almost a month late. We finished our time in New Orleans up and headed off the day Jim flew home (MLK day).  The first leg of our journey was through the swamps and oil fields along US-61 to Baton Rouge.  Baton Rouge was almost a ghost town but it had a nice peaceful feeling to it which was the perfect antidote to NOLA.  We have but one lame picture from Baton Rouge.  We did the 1.5 mile long loop along the river and back which was enjoyable. After the river walk we hit the riverboat casino which was just down the riverfront from where we parked.  The casino was enjoyable and we were there a surprisingly long time without spending very much money.  I think we left as winners.  Like the rest of downtown BR, that casino was darn near empty while we were there. Leaving New Orleans we took endless US and state roads north including many miles on US-65 in Louisiana and Arkansas.  Arkansas seemed endless going from South to No...

Not a lot of photos for this leg of the journey. We spent 4 nights in New Orleans at the Maison Du Puy hotel in the French Quarter.  The weather was cool on some days but two days were about 70. It didn't take long for all 3 of us (Brian's friend from Vermont being the third) to decide that we weren't crazy about New Orleans.  It wasn't that anything awful happened there it just isn't our style.  Even our hotel rooms had a constant background noise.  For Brian and I, facing the courtyard, our noise was the quiet but incessant New Orleans style jazz music played in the courtyard, seemingly 24 hours a day.  For Jim, facing the street, he had a variety of loud cars, ambulances, people fighting, screaming and hollering each night.  The streets in the Quarter are ALL narrow one ways and not much sun gets through the tightly packed buildings and sometimes there are a lot of stacked up cars and some honking etc.  It strangely felt like what NYC might have...

Road trip basics: Driving from home in New Jersey to New Orleans and back. Dates: January 15-26. Originally we planned on taking the train to New Orleans.  In fact, we had it all booked and we were going to come home on the 23rd, getting home on the 24th.  Well, on December 13th an innocent looking email said that something had changed on one segment of our trip and to call for more info.  I've had these happen a lot with airlines and Amtrak and its usually something like we changed your departure from 9:05 am to 9:08 am due to an annual schedule adjustment.  Not this time!  Our return trip was summarily cancelled because there will be no service from NOLA to Trenton on the 23rd.  Turns out not on the 24th either.  So at that point we'd be coming back the 25th and even if everything went perfectly I couldn't make my flights to LA for work that day.  So we made the trip into (a slightly longer) road trip. Day 1 - Tuesday January 15 After...

We tried very hard and there were a few that we didn't post after the NH hike but we fell well short of our 52 hikes goal.  What can we say?  Brian going to school plus all the other normal pressures of day to day life made 52 hikes a huge stretch in 2018.  Still, the goal motivated us to do a lot more hikes than we otherwise would have. 2019's goal is different.... 10 hikes of at least 10 miles in 2019. Chris

Peaked Hill Pond Trail Posted by Chris 11/10/18 Basics: Length - About 3.2 miles Elevation gain - About 450 feet Nearest city - Thornton NH? Difficulty - Easy The Day: We were on our way to Brian's brother's wedding at beautiful Mountain View Grand  hotel.  It had been a difficult day and we were both in a bad mood as we did errands and a longer than it seemed drive from Sturbridge MA.  This hike was very spontaneous since we had just a little bit of extra time before we could check in etc. The trail: Despite starting just inches off  of I-93, the hike quickly became a woody and peaceful experience with a modest but steady uphill incline.  The pond at the top was beautiful but none of our photos of it were great so I've skipped most of them. Photos by Brian

Various Nockamixon State Park trails Posted by Chris 11/3/18 Basics: Length - About 3 miles Elevation gain - Minimal Nearest city - Quakertown PA Difficulty - Easy The Day: We headed out to this park at the end of a busy day.  I had printed out the map etc for the hike a long time ago but had never made it to the park.  The drive was pleasant but the park was very wet. The trail(s): We tried walking along the trail below the large number of cabins the state has along the lake.  It was very wet and in many spots extremely muddy.  We ended up turning around and going back to where the car was to try going uphill away from the lake and at first that trail was considerably drier but later became a narrow ditch with water in the bottom which we had to walk duck legged along before becoming so muddy that we couldn't get around it without getting messy at which point we turned around again and tried the THIRD trail that led off from where the car was park...