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.