Mar 22, 2014

We woke up early in the still-cold car and slowly made our way out of sleeping bags. After a quick stop to the nearby Wawa for breakfast, we returned to the park to start the Mt. Misery hike at Pakim Pond.

The hike took us over the pond and through thick, quiet woods as the sun rose higher and began to warm us up. The layers came off gradually as we hiked and started to feel much warmer. The silence of early morning and soft ground was really nice. We didn't see anyone on the trail except for a dog and its owner at the parking lot.

We came across a section of the woods that had been fairly recently burned. Everything was still charred and the hard plastic trail signs had melted down completely. This area also proved to be lacking in blazes so we second guessed if we were headed the right way. Ultimately we decided to keep going and it turned out we were still on the trail we meant to be on.

While this trail was flat, it was incredibly varied in its scenery. We passed by a few bodies of water that were quite large and then we came through several sections of bogs where the path narrowed and this is what we saw reaching deep to one side.

There were grass-filled marshes with amazing colors and these open wooded areas where we could see for a great distance until the forest seemed to turn to fog. It was a great morning hike.

When we finished hiking we went to get food before heading over to Stafford Woods again for another game. I guess we liked it. We started on the back again as there were a lot of people playing. Nice days. We rescued a floating disc from the pond, but someone was already there to claim it and thank us.

Next we headed down to New Brooklyn DGC. This course is like the opposite of Stafford as most of the holes are played in open fields. I didn't mind the openness of the course since there are plenty of good uses of distance and obstacles. There were some long shots near the road, and as we finished the last few holes the area was flooded and my shoes ended up soaked. Nice way to end. Also, the last hole seemed like an afterthought and was just poorly laid out. I'd still play the course again.

After packing a lot of fun into about 24 hours I headed home as the sun was setting. I happily took it easy for the rest of the night when I got home. My legs were feeling how much walking I'd done. I need to get them back into shape.

Mar 21, 2014

I worked at Memorial in a math class during the day. I didn't eat breakfast and I was very hungry, so of course I didn't have a break until about 1:30. But I got to leave early. Oh well. After work I made plans to meet Joanna at Stafford Woods DGC to give it a try. It finally has 18 holes and Scott keeps saying it's really good. We started on the back 9 to avoid a couple of groups starting and it was pretty sweet. Lots of leaves on the ground hid our discs pretty often, but the layout was nice.

There were some long holes. That was unexpected but nice. It was mostly in the woods, but there was one section in a large, open field. It works out to balance the course a bit. The hardest part was finding the baskets without maps on the back section. There was a hanging basket that was a lot of fun. I made like six putts in a row on it. The rest of the course is a really great layout. The front 9 is definitely more varied, but the whole thing is a lot of fun.

We got done just about in perfect time to head down to Brendan Byrne State Forest to meet up with Mike and Alison, the people leading the Meetup group for a Friday Night Fitness Hike. They do it every Friday night. We got there and I was surprised to see a bunch of other cars. We met everyone and then got to hiking into the setting sun down a wide path. There ended up being 9 of us, and we didn't use lights. Our eyes adjusted pretty well. 

I ended up talking to Mike for most of the hike about photography and hiking and marathon-running. They used to run marathons and now they do this kind of thing all the time. I hope I'm like them when I'm their age. They are in their 60s, by the way. It was a great experience, and we stopped once in a while to look at the stars and decide how much farther to go. We ended up doing about 9 miles. I really would like to do this again. Joanna and I set up the car to camp for the night and got settled in to the surprisingly cold night.