Another 10 miles

Between all of the other fun things we were doing all summer, and the rain, and the heat, we didn't get much hiking in. Now that the weather is cooling off again it is a good time to go hiking. Football games and scout camp outs are going to fill almost all of our weekends so we've been trying to figure out when we are going to get the rest of our hiking done. We decided that over the next couple of weeks, before B goes back to school, and while the girls are at school we could get a couple of hikes done. So last Monday, R, B, and I hiked another 10 miles. We decided to hike around Bear Mountain. The mountain itself is quite steep so, in order to get all 10 miles in, we weren't going to be able to hike over the mountain. That would be too difficult and we'd wear ourselves out. So, we made a 10 mile loop around it. (We still did a lot of climbing and descending though.)

We saw a doe and her fawn, twice. We saw a snake and 4 frogs. We crossed a beautiful stream/river 3 times.
We hiked a lot of muddy trails. (It had rained over the weekend). We each slipped and fell once.

We passed through an old ghost town and saw the rock foundations of a couple of old buildings. (Most of them were severely overgrown with vines).
The end of our hike took us through the Bear Mountain Zoo but since we've been there many times and we were in a hurry to get home before the girls got out of school, we didn't stop to look at the animals. Our best views from the whole hike were from there at the zoo where it overlooks the Hudson River and Bear Mountain Bridge.
Scenery wise, it wasn't a hike that we'll choose to repeat but we still enjoyed being outside, hiking, and spending several hours together.

P.S. For a preview of one of our upcoming hikes, check out the last picture. The top of the mountain at the other end of the bridge is called Anthony's Nose. We'll be heading to that top of that soon.