Nov 22, 2013

This is a day in photos. I didn't sleep great, which is actually pretty unusual in my car. My phone died, so we woke up later than planned to rain falling on the car and gray skies all around. It was slightly discouraging, not to mention it made it harder to want to get up. Once we got up, we packed things up, changed, and headed into Wal*Mart to get delicious apple sauce squeezy packet things, other snacks, and to use the bathrooms to get ready for the day. Then we headed off under the menacing sky, hoping for the best. We got to Kelly's Run/Conestoga Trail trailhead and began our long trek.

I have done this trail a couple times before in one way or another so I recognized a lot of the first part. I was glad I didn't bring my hoodie since I was warm after a mile or so. For the first part of the trail we barely felt any rain so that was nice. The slippery rocks under fallen, wet leaves was not a lot of fun.

We got to the Pinnacle overlook after a few steep climbs up treacherous rocks covered in dry leaves. They were actually worse than the wet ones and covered everything so you had to take a chance every time you stepped. The view was nice and we took a break to eat a Clif bar and rest. We also looked up directions and maps to no avail. There really is no good resource for trails and hiking. Many websites claim to be the source, but none of them are. Lies. The map on the bulletin board there was of no use either. So we decided to just go for it.

The next part of the trail was somewhat familiar to me. We traveled along the railroad tracks and then along another rushing glen. I recognized most of this area, but after a while we were in a place that looked completely unfamiliar to me. We came to a really pretty area with cascading water and still-yellow leaves on the trees. Despite the nice scenery we soon ended up walking in a circle because the blue blazes branched off in two separate paths that led back to where we started. This made no sense, but we soon found the path again.

We continued off along a trail I didn't know at all in the hopes that the blue blazes were the same ones that we started off on. We crossed a log bridge with ropes in one direction before getting to the end of the path that dropped us off on a road and leading nowhere so we turned around and crossed back over the same bridge, discouraged and heading back the way we came. We seemed to be heading away from where we needed to go so we decided to break off the trail and cut down a steep embankment to get to a nearby campground.

When we got there we wandered until we found a camp store with a couple of employees inside. We spoke to Renny, who advised us where we needed to go to get back to our car and, just as we were leaving, she offered us a ride back. We gladly accepted her generous offer. It was only a couple of miles, but the rain had picked up, and we both had wet shoes and no desire to walk three miles down a narrow road with no shoulder. She sympathized with our woes, as she knows all too well that the trails can be poorly marked and easy to get lost on. We thanked her profusely and happily changed into dry clothes.

On the way home we both wanted food badly. We found a Whole Food, but we had been snacking on Chex Mix on the way there so we couldn't finish our plates. The samosa was so good though. Spicy. Mmm.

I dropped Joanna at her car and then headed home myself. We hit a bunch of traffic before that Wawa, but after that it opened up pretty quickly for me to get home. I spent the night organizing some wedding photos for a meeting, and catching up on last night's shows.