Finished

We spent our Saturday after Thanksgiving taking our last hike so that B could complete his hiking merit badge. The weather was perfect, a little overcast, and not too cold.

For this hike we drove down to the Bear Mountain State Park and set out on one of the many trails that cross through the park. Our destination was just 1 and 3/4 miles and 1100 feet of elevation gain away, but in order to get the mileage B needed, we took the "scenic" route. This was probably the toughest hike we've done. Not only was our destination 1100 feet above where we started, but we had to go up and down a couple of other hills to get there so we climbed a lot more than 1100 feet.

We discovered that the great thing about hiking in the fall is that you can see a lot more without the leaves on the trees. The bad thing about the leaves not being on the trees is that they are all on the ground and that made portions of the trail a little more dangerous than normal. We had to be extra careful not to slip on rocks and we had to watch out that when we stepped on hidden rocks, we didn't twist an ankle.

On this hike, we learned the value of carrying extra socks (we always do) because both C and P got wet feet. Many sections of the trail were muddy and swampy due to the large amounts of rain we had received earlier in the week. In some cases the trail was a small stream and we had to pick our away along the sides and back and forth across it.

Here are the kids taking a break.

Our destination was well worth the effort. Although it was a bit hazy, we could still see NYC from the top of the mountain. P had the good idea to bring our binoculars on this hike and with them, we could even pick out the Empire state building.


We also climbed the tower that now stands where a fire tower used to be. Inside the tower are pictures and history of the park. We didn't take the time to really look at them or read them since we had to keep hurrying along so that we could get finished with the hike. But, since you can actually drive all the way to the tower, we can do that another time with very little effort.

There is also a very beautiful and relatively flat 1.3 mile loop at the top that will be beautiful when the bushes start blooming in the spring. While we were hiking this loop, we got a great view north. The flat, cleared area with little houses on the top of a hill in this picture, is the new housing area that was built here.

Our route down was a newly restored section of the Appalachian Trail. It was pretty steep and incorporated many stone steps to help combat erosion. We gave C the job of counting the steps as we went down. After a 1.7 mile descent, she told us that we had gone down over 670 stairs. (Not all of the trail was steps.) There were even complete stairwells in portions of the trail. Here is P in one of them.

If you want to read more information about this portion of the trail, click here.

With the leaves off of the trees, there were lots of views that would have been obstructed other times during the year. We had several views of the bridge and river as we came down the mountain.

The required hikes for the merit badge have been a little bit long and strenuous for the shorter legged people in our family. So, we kept telling the kids that as soon as we are done with the required hikes, that then we would take shorter hikes and just hike for fun.

Our hike on Saturday ended with this wonderful comment by P. "Now can we hike for fun?"

I thought we had already been having fun! :-)

Almost Forgotten Halloween

Clearly life has been busy. It wasn't until I was uploading photos from our most recent hike (post to come later this week) that I realized that I hadn't upload, and therefore hadn't blogged about, our Halloween.

So, here are a few pictures from our Halloween activities.

Of course, we carved pumpkins. B still hates to take the seeds and "goop" out of the inside, but loves to do the actual carving.

C doesn't mind the goop so much and also loves getting to carve.

Thanks to all of the great pumpkin carving tools, the process is safe and easy enough that even P can carve a pumpkin. Hers was her own design.

Here are our glowing pumpkins.

P got to dress up twice for Halloween. First as a cowgirl for her class's Fall celebration and Hoe Down. Here she is demonstrating her hat swinging "Yee Ha" (minus the hat that was at school).

To go trick-or-treating, P dressed up as a mouse using parts of her own items and the ears from C's long ago dance costume. The orange shirt underneath was not part of her costume...just an extra layer to keep her warm as this year it was a little chilly on Halloween night.

C was a robot of the Tron variety. Being her usual, creative self, she came up with the idea all on her own and her costume turned out pretty cool.
Here she is with the lights out.

B chose not to dress up this year. Instead, he volunteered to man the door and pass out candy. After observing R do this job the last few years, he realized that this was the best way to get candy with very little work. So, he sat outside and visited with his friend until they got too cold, and then they came inside and played video games, answered the door, and had all of the candy they wanted to eat, without having to walk anywhere to get it. (I should have taken a picture. Oh, well.)

All in all, it was a good holiday!

Before and Almost After

One year ago this week, we moved into our new quarters. Due to the combining of two backyards into one, the removal of fences, one of the previous occupant's trampoline and many construction vehicles driving and parking on the yard, our back yard was a mess.
My summer project was to overhaul the back yard. I started by pulling out part of one of the existing patios and putting in some gardens. (Lots of dirt moving was involved.)
Next I moved plants and bulbs growing in what were now random places in the yard, into two new flower beds. (Around the tree and in the far corner.) And R and B removed several wheel barrow loads of rock out of the yard.
Then, while the girls were in school and B hadn't started school yet, we tackled the next project. (Notice that at this point, my summer project became a fall project.) First, we moved the satellite dish. (Careful measurements were involved so that we still would have reception when we were done.) Next we dug up tons of small rocks along one of the sidewalks...
sifted the excess dirt out of them and relocated them.
We removed two old flower beds and relocated all of the mulch to the garden area. This is mid way through the project.
We took out a small patio area near the street and reused the pavers inside the garden area and to outline the garden. (This picture is actually from much later in the project but it is the only one I have where you can see the pavers outlining the garden.)
The next project was to get rid of the old cement patio. Luckily for B, our community management's grounds crew pulled it all out and hauled it away. It was going to be his job.
Then, in October, my labor force arrived. :-) With their help, we finished removing the other patio and laid the pavers in a new patio. We also finally got rid of the extra piles of dirt in the yard, using them to fill in the low areas where the patio was previously located.
(The sand will stay on the patio for a while so that we can move it around and allow it to settle into the cracks between the pavers.)

One morning while I was gone, my labor force rallied the rest of the troops in the house to rake all of the acorns, branches, and leaves out of the yard. (Mom took this picture out of an upstairs window. I wish I would have done this all along through the project because you can see the whole yard at once.)
Next up...rototilling. That was a work out. Some areas of the ground were so compacted that Dad actually had to loosen the dirt with a shovel first or the tiller would just spin and spin and not really make any progress. We eventually figured out a technique to use and that helped some, but it required wrestling the tiller. I was pretty sore the next day. After 5+ hours of tilling and another couple of hours of moving dirt and raking, the job was done and the yard was leveled out.
My original plan was to plant grass this fall. But it is now so late that the leaves are really coming off of the trees and it would be impossible to rake them with new grass and straw in the yard. If I left them, they'd kill the new grass. So, I will have to wait until spring to get the grass growing. In the meantime, I'll continue to level the dirt as it settles over the next couple of months. Hopefully, next summer I'll have nice grass. Then, I will be able to post the true "after" picture.

Anthony's Nose

Last Saturday the weather was cooperative and the family schedule was free so we set off on another 10 mile hike. We were especially excited because Grandma E and Grandpa B are here visiting and they came along.

Our destination this time was Anthony's nose. If we would have taken the short cut (parked in the closest parking area and just went up and back, we would have only needed to hike 4.4 miles. But, since we needed to go 10 miles, we parked a little further away. Once we got to the top (about 800 feet of elevation gain) we had great views. The kids were especially excited to see that we could actually see where we had parked our van.
They were wishing that they had brought binoculars so that they could really see it good. I'm sure we'll repeat this hike again (the shorter version) and next time we'll bring our binoculars.

From the top, we could also see the majority of where we had hiked and where we were still going to hike. (Our route is marked in red.)

We started our hike at an Historic site where we parked our van in the parking lot and hiked down to a foot bridge that crosses a tributary. We stopped on the foot bridge to take a quick picture.

From there we hiked up to a State Park where we stopped at the look out area on the left side of the Bear Mountain Bridge to get a good view of where we were going. (Not sure what Grandma was pointing at...something interesting down the river.)

Then we walked across the bridge.

On the other side of the bridge is where the real climbing happened. The kids even did some extra climbing by finding huge rocks to climb up on just about every time we stopped to take a break.

Once we made it to the top, we enjoyed the beautiful view and ate our lunch.
Then, it was back down the mountain and across the bridge to a park where everyone else rested while Grandpa, B, and I made a loop through the state park and out around the lake and back so that we could get in the 10 miles.

This is a view of the lake from the top of Anthony's nose. (Notice how brown the river is. It has looked like this ever since the hurricane, due to all of the dirt that was and still is being washed into it. It looks like chocolate milk. It actually used to be darker and more red but it has lightened up some.)

Here is a picture of Anthony's nose from the far side of the lake.

Here is the lake. There were tons of people out walking, fishing, etc, and attending the October fest celebrations that were happening at the park.
If there was a hiking award for this hike, it would definitely go to P. She was amazing. She did all seven miles that the whole family hiked, all by herself...no piggy backs. That was a huge accomplishment, and not just because of the distance she traveled. When we were climbing up to Anthony's nose, some of the steps to get up and over and around the rocks (it is a very rocky trail) were as high as her waist, or higher, and she scrambled right up them. B was an awesome big brother, and in the steepest areas he would take her hand and help pull her up. They were a great team. Every time I asked P if she wanted a piggy back ride, she said, "No. I'm going to do it all by myself." And she did! (Here she is at the top.)

First Day of School Part II

After 2 and a half weeks of having the house to himself since his sisters were at school, B finally started school on Tuesday. I can't believe that he is in high school now. Wow! The time passes fast.

I actually forgot to take a picture of him the first day of school because I was so anxious about him getting out the door on time so that he didn't miss the bus. Here he is with the neighbor kids waiting for the bus. I had fun watching them out the window. They've grown up together since kindergarten and now they are all in high school.

Next week we get to start early morning seminary. I'm not sure I'm ready for 5:45 a.m. Oh well.

Twenty!!!

One of the requirements for the hiking merit badge is to take a 20 mile day hike. We've completed 3 of the 5 Ten mile hikes and were planning to do the 20 mile hike last. When we realized how few free Saturdays we are going to have between now and November, we changed our plan. Since we never intended on everyone doing the twenty mile hike (we are just too slow with the girls) we decided that B and I would do this hike one day while the girls were at school and on a day that R could be home when they got home. Yesterday was that day and so we hiked.

All around the country there is a trail program called Rails to Trails, where old railroad right of ways are paved and turned into walking and biking trails. The merit badge counselor recommended that we hike the Rails to Trails Heritage Trail from Monroe to Goshen. It is just over 9 1/2 miles so with an extension of hiking into the town of Goshen for a ways, we would reach 10 miles and then we could turn around and hike back.

We began our hike at 9:22 a.m. Our goal was to be back at the van in 8 hours. We thought this would be very do-able since the trail is paved and has very little elevation change. We were prepared for a somewhat boring hike and were pleasantly surprised to find some interesting sights along our way. Right off the bat we saw a ferret. Neither of us had seen one of those in the wild before.

We also saw an old cemetery,

A cool looking old fallen down tree,

A couple of railroad cars in a section that still had track that wasn't overgrown,

and several marshes and ponds.

The coolest thing we saw were the leaf prints. At first we thought it was just light coming through the trees but then when we saw complete leafs, we realized that we were seeing prints of leaves.

We spent a long time wondering how they got there until we came up with this hypothesis. In the area where we saw them, the water in the ditches was very grey and a lot of the plants and underbrush were covered in a grey film. We assumed that this was the result of dirt that had a lot of grey clay in it, that washed over everything during the flooding that came with the hurricane. We are guessing that leaves coated in this mud, blew and landed on the pavement. During the wind that came after the storm, the mud dried and the leaves blew away, leaving a perfect stamp on the pavement. Since we haven't had any rain since the hurricane, the prints are still there.

The first half of our hike, the way out, went great. We stopped just short of the turn around point and took a 30 minute lunch break. Then we wandered into the town, and took this picture at the exact half way point.

We then walked the 3/4 of a mile back to our lunch spot, changed our socks, took another quick break and earnestly began our return trip. It was 1:40. We were on track to make our goal. Very quickly we began suffering from sore feet and a couple of leg cramps. We stopped at the old Chester Train station to take a break. Notice how tired B looks.

At this point we were about 14.5 miles into our hike and we hit a wall. For the next two miles we fell victim to our sore feet and muscle cramps. Our speed dropped way off and for those couple of miles it was a bit of a mental game. We managed to push through though and then we were cruising again. We made it back to the van at 5:38.

Now that we've completed this, neither one of us ever wants to do it again though. It was a long tough day. I ended up with a blister on my heal and B is still pretty sore in his left calf from where it cramped so bad yesterday. Other than that, we have no lasting injuries...and we're done!

Originally we planned to do another 10 miles on Saturday. It looks like it is going to rain now so we aren't going and that is probably a good thing. Although our feet aren't bothering us now, they might protest pretty fast if we tried to make them go 10 miles after only one day of rest.