A Walk in the Woods
A beautiful sunny day! Who wants to stay inside to wash clothes, dishes, or correct papers? Anyone? Anyone?
With a sink full of dishes and half of the laundry done, Joe and I got our daypack filled with gatorade, snacks, and water for the pup. Penny always knows when something exciting is going to happen when we put her harness on her. She starts to shake and whine softly. The closer we get to the forest, the more she whines in anticipation. She just loves the woods!
After climbing up Heart Attack Hill (my own name for the first part of the Longfellow Trail), we again took the same lesser known trail which brought us to the old logging road. With Penny always running about 20 yards ahead of us, we had to call her back when we decided to take another unfamiliar trail, Bridle Trail. You could tell that the forest we were in was second growth. The trees were in almost perfect rows. There was hardly any ground cover between them, and the perspectives of the near and far gray-brown trees seemed almost surreal.
We found that this trail brought us back out onto the old logging road, which we were familiar with. Soon we came upon the Indian Spring/Joyce Kilmer connection that we had seen before. We knew (or thought we did!) that it came out onto the Longfellow trail, so we decided to take it to explore the unknown. What a great trail! Down the hill there was indeed a spring where Penny refreshed herself. The trail continued to wind around and down through a cooler, damper, and darker part of the forest. Of course the darkness I knew was due to the fact that we hadn't started our hike until around 4:45PM, and clouds were rolling in from a rainstorm that would hit later in the day. It was about 6:15 when I wondered where we were taking ourselves.
Of course that started some different conversations that were probably best left unspoken...
"Are there any bears in these woods?"
"Probably."
"What would you do if you saw one?"
"Stand still."
"What if it started chasing us?"
"I don't know..."
"What if this is one of those trails that goes on and on completely out of the park?"
"What if it starts to storm on us before we get back?
So...as we walked on I'm positive it got darker and quieter. Paranoia had hitched a ride on my backpack. We still probably had another 2 hours of light, but still...
Soon we came to where Bridle Trail and Joyce Kilmer trail split. Down over the hill we could see houses or something. So we were relieved that we could just walk down there if we needed. We continued to follow Kilmer trail down the hill. We soon saw a paved road ahead. Where the heck were we? Trying to get our sense of direction straight we stood on the road for a few minutes deciding what to do. Hey! Here comes a station wagon! We'll ask them where this road goes. A woman and her daughter from Pittsburgh informed us that it went right down to the canoe rental area right along the river! That made sense. They offered to give us a ride over to our truck since it was getting a little rainy looking. We said that we had a muddy little dog, but they didn't care. Knowing that it would be another 2 mile walk in uncertain weather we decided to accept.
I'm glad we did. Sitting in the car felt so good after walking for so long. It was a pleasant surprise to have nice people offer a ride to complete strangers. We thanked them repeatedly, wished them a Happy Easter, and waved our goodbyes.
On the way home we stopped in at a bar where Joe's dad had apparently parked for the evening. We only stayed for a beer since Penny was waiting anxiously in the truck. A good day.
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