among nature: 12.14

Hello there my friend

Red Tailed Hawk

Mammoth Cave National Park, KY

Mammoth Cave National Park, renown for its underground tributaries, actually has 70-some odd miles of backcountry trails to explore as well. We decided to piece a bunch of them together to circumnavigate the park (of course we visited the caves too).

We didn't pay a lot of attention to calculating the mileage, and we ended up at our campsite for the night at lunchtime...so we pushed on.

I won't name names, but someone in our party decided it would be a good idea to soak his right foot and right gloved hand when crossing this creek. Here's to wet gear!

We ended up camping in the floodplains of the Second Creek and Nolin River juncture that first night, sheltered by the wind that was coming up the ridge we had just descended.

The next day we crossed several streams. Some were dry crossings - like Wet Prong.....and some were wet - like Dry Prong. Go figure.

The next night we made our way to the Bluffs campsite, passing our water source coming off the rocks shown here along the way.

The Bluffs made a great campsite.

Thanksgiving snow!

Mid State Trail, PA

I have to be honest. For some reason I wasn't looking forward to my annual Thanksgiving week hike along the Mid State Trail this year. After getting on the trail, I had my ups and downs...both physically and mentally. In retrospect I'm glad I went. Solo hiking seems to cleanse the soul, and I needed to pare the fat off mine.

I got dropped off at Yellow Creek near Loysburg and was headed south to the MD border for this trip, some 50+ miles distant. The MST association does a lot for trail advocacy, all on a volunteer basis for the love of the trail. The Everett regional manager gave me a shuttle and I was off on an unseasonably warm PA day. Thanks Deb!

The Mid State Trail (blazed orange) shares its thoroughfare with the Great Eastern Trail. The trail was well blazed through this section (perhaps in some sections over-blazed as evidenced by the 4 on this tree!).

There was a good bit of bear scat on the trail. It let me know I wasn't hiking alone. But then again, I ran into a hunter on day 3 that indicated they killed 9 bear in this area a few days before. So whose to say if I had company of the ursus variety or if they had all been taken? I do know I saw between 20 and 30 whitetail on this trip.

Water on this trip was hard to come by.

This was confounded by the fact that somehow my filter was broken. I used a combination of judicious not filtering and boiling. Thankfully I never got sick.

Covered Bridge near Hewitt, PA