Into the Woods

For the first time in close to a year, I was able to go and enjoy a long hike. The Mrs., the dogs and myself headed out hike a section of the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania. I haven't had too many opportunities to get into the mountains since moving back to the east coast, which is really disappointing.

There are some interesting differences between east coast vs. west coast hiking. First, the weather is just not as good on the east coast. The humidity makes hiking a lot more difficult as breathing is harder and you sweat like a monkey. Second, it is hard to get used to the distances. We went on a 8.5 mile hike here, which would typically be regarded as a moderately long hike in the Cascades, but on the east coast that is a very long hike. The trails are much more rugged here as we had to hike over 3 miles of craggy, exposed rocks (as the old saying goes about hiking in Pennsylvania- "this is where boots go to die"). As you might imagine, this slows down hiking time considerably.

Otherwise, it was a great time and I will let the pictures speak for themselves:





I think the dogs had fun too. Here is Pico:



Here is Lola