a thing in 163 photos hiking Sunday morning Maddy woke me up early eager... Took a lil break to enjoy the view of the river. We walked all the way around the big loop... After hanging for a bit, we drove to a huge park next to the Hudson for a hike. Maddy love a trail. Hike break! ...and then we grabbed some beers and went for a hike on the mountain. ...up to the top of my property. Nice to be out of the city sometimes. ;) Sunday morning hike with Maddy and Dreiss. Nice job, buddy. Took Maddy for a morning hike and marveled at a huge, dew-jeweled spider web. Pretty purple wildflowers. ...and Jane. Early morning hike on the mountain with Maddy... Doug found some wild berries for us to eat. Tree hugging buds. We stopped deep in the woods and communed with some trees. ...and decided to take a rainy hike in a nearby forest. Love me a rainy hike in the summer. Way better than her city morning walks. Maddy loves exploring in the woods. Fern field! After finishing work for the day, Maddy and I set out to explore the mountain! I have never owned any land and it was really fun to walk around and get the feel of the property. Ellen took us for a nice long hike along the trails behind their house! Double doggies! It had snowed overnight, but we didn't let that get in the way of our hiking plans! Excellent day of hiking! We also found this tree that had recently had the bark scraped off by a Black Bear. Wintry waterfall! Good to see you, buddy! <3 ...drive upstate to Fahnestock State Park to go hiking with Catrinel at Three Lakes Trail the next day! Before leaving, we hiked out to the scenic overlook. If you're walking around with 3 dudes in a band... We decided to wander further into the park and see what else it had to offer. Fresh (thin) air! About halfway point. Trail loops was a little over 3 hours. Had an excellent afternoon of solo hiking. I love hiking a new spot with no idea what you're going to see. ...we walked back up to Pete's truck.so we could drive around and explore the rest of the property! ...we hiked back out! A little after 4pm... Hiking in on the planked trail. Later that afternoon, the whole group headed to a nearby state park. You hike up for 15 minutes, but when you reach the top it's worth it! On the way back from the campgrounds, I stopped off to explore Kaaterskill Falls! The hike back down to the RV! Enjoys hiking so much! We followed a stream until we came to... ...and hit the woods with Maddy to do some exploring. Such exploring! We walked all the way around and out onto it! About to take the slippery-rock path all the way back down. No matter how rough the terrain gets, this little dingus is always trying to pull me up the trail. Bad photo, good sign. "Beaver Brook Trail: This trail is extremely tough. If you lack experience please use another trail. Take special care at the cascades to avoid tragic results." This was the beginning of discovering that Maddy LOVES TO HIKE! At first I kept her on-lease everywhere.... ...but over time, I let her roam wild! Swamp dog! ...and left the campgrounds to drive over to the White Mountain National Forest trailhead! There are lots of natural caves worn into the limestone that used to be inhabited by native peoples. Had to hustle my way down to make it to my car before the sun set! The view from the top! The view of the canyon that I hiked through! ...and up to the top of the mountain! to hike through the canyon... It took me about 40 minutes... The trail leads into a canyon where you get to walk in-between these huge mountains. Really neat to see that these trees have a good part of their roots above the ground. View from in the canyon! Exploring so hard. Crouching down to capture... The pretty ferns with their early, alternating fall colors. Fern field There are several trail loops you can do. Woods buddy. Following the seven mile loop. Hung out for a while enjoying nature and making sure we got enough hot pics to get our 'Gram on later. Five minutes after laughing about this, a hiker passed us coming the other way on the trail telling us that a bear had been spotted by other hikers nearby! We made it to the top of the trail unmolested by nature. So much fun hiking with this one. As we were hiking, we started wondering what animals we might run into. "We might even see a bear." "Really? Fuck! Wait are you sure? Do you still have a cell signal? Maybe we use our phone to look up whether there are bears here. What mountain are we on again?" "Bear Mountain?" "Bear Mountain! OH FUCK!" As we made our way up the mountain... ...the trail started revealing beautiful views of the Hudson. We set up the self-timer for this one and had to run all the way to the tunnel and then turn around and try to act all casual. Haha. We managed to park and find the trailhead just after 11am. My knees were creaky after the drive so I ate a few bananas. Mmmm, bananas. As we hiked in, we stopped to explore a few of the abandoned tunnels left behind in the 1890s by the Spiral Railway Corporation. ...I opted to drive over to the nearby Jenny Jump State Forest. I always take pics of the posted trail maps before setting off on a hike so I'll have a reference copy on my camera. Only two hours left! Right after we left camp, we ran into another group of campers who were stopped because one of them had badly sprained or broken their ankle. About two hours later, we were stopped for a rest... ...before we got back on the trail and started our descent. Hiking back around the lake. Moving out. With the campsite almost in our sight, the pouring rain finally overtook us. We had to scramble up really steep hillside to find a tree large enough to provide any shelter. We ditched the trail and made our own way around the lake. Grant had told me in advance that we were going to go camping in an awesome location, but this was beyond all of my expectations! ...and we needed to hustled up because there was a big rain storm rolling in over the mountain! We'd reached the top lake, but we still had a ways to go to reach the campsite...
