Beautiful weather called out for us to go kayaking, so we headed across the Bay Bridge to Martinak State Park, near Denton in Caroline County, MD. Martinak State Park sits beside the Choptank River and Watts Creek, and in addition to some hiking trails, also offers a boat launch into Watts Creek. If you head […]
ecotourism
Kaaterskill Falls in Catskill Park
Kaaterskill Falls is a two-stage waterfall on Spruce Creek in the eastern Catskill Mountains of New York, in the Kaaterskill Wild Forest. Kaaterskill Falls is one of the country’s oldest tourist attractions and has been depicted in many paintings, poems, and books since the 1800s. The popular hike out to see the falls from Laurel […]
Hiking on the Sweet Air Loop in Gunpowder Falls State Park
The hike we’d picked out was loop in the Sweet Air Area of the Gunpowder Falls State Park, following first the Little Gunpowder Trail, marked in white blazes, and then a yellow-blazed trail, picking up a red-blazed trail, and ending with a portion of the yellow-blazed Barley Pond Loop trail. The trails within the Sweet […]
Panther Rocks Exploration
Panther Rocks, located in the Moshannon State Forest adjacent to SB Elliott State Park, is overshadowed by Bilgers Rocks, also in Clearfield County, but are worth a quick visit for a fun afternoon in the woods. If you’re into geocaching, then you’ll be pleased to note that there is at least one geocach on the […]
Pohick Bay Kayaking
Pohick Bay Regional Park is a Fairfax County regional park on Pohick Bay of the Potomac River. The park offers camping, hiking, a water park, boat launches for both canoes and kayaks (a place along the shoreline) and a boat ramp for motorized boats. Once you launch, head due north — or turn left after […]
Sherando Cliffs and Lake Hike
The Sherando Cliffs and Lakeside Loop Hike is a short hike — less than 2 miles for the entire loop — with minimal elevation gain (300 feet or less) that offers some pretty views, a pleasant leg-stretch climbing up the side of a mountain, and some gorgeous vistas of Sherando Lake itself. Sherando Lake Recreation […]
Hiking on Hallowed Ground: Worthington Farm Trails in Monocacy National Battlefield Park
The Worthington House. The trail head to the Brooks Hill Loop is to the left of the house (as you face it). In a perhaps apocraphal conversation, three decades after the Battle of Monocacy, which had taken place on July 9, 1864, former Confederate Major General John Gordon was introduced to Union Major General Lew […]
Geocaching Along Clearfield County’s Five Trails
Geocaching has seemed like something I’d like to do — I just didn’t know how to get started or what was involved. Not familiar with it? Has the idea of treasure-hunting every appealed to you? Geocaching is similar, except that it’s real, unlike the myths of gold buried in them thar hills. In fact, gecaching […]
Winter Morning Hike at the Prettyboy Resevoir
CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) Trail is a 4-mile combination loop and out-and-back trail. Although it’s likely you’ll encounter other hikers, the trail isn’t crowded and most of the time you’re alone on the trai With an elevation gain of just over 300 feet, this is an easy trail and a fun way to spend a […]
HIking the Coot Peninsula in Liberty Reservoir
Coot Peninsula Loop is a 4.2 mile popular loop trail that is simply delightful. The trail brings you through some lovely woods and then onto a peninsula (as the trail name suggests) that has you walking within sight of water on both sides, until finally the peninsula widens, like a spoon, into the Liberty Reservoir. I […]
Scenic Drive Along the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive
The Skyline Drive – Blue Ridge Parkway together form an historic scenic drive that runs 574 miles through Virginia and North Carolina through the Blue Ridge Mountains and Appalachia. That time I almost lost my phone hanging out the window taking a photo along Skyline Drive. The Blue Ridge Parkway is a […]
Table Rock Hike in Monongahela National Forest
What’s a little mud when the view is this? Table Rock is a massive rock outcropping on the western side of Canaan Mountain, overlooking the Dry Fork and Cheat River valleys. The hike out to it will carry you through a hardwood forest as well as rhododendron thickets; it’s unlikely you’ll encounter anyone else, so […]
Overlook Mountain Trail Hike
Overlook Mountain is located just north of Woodstock, NY. In fact, if you walk down the main thoroughfare of Woodstock, you can see it clearly. It’s a popular trail — one of the most popular in the Catskills, in fact. You won’t get any solitude but that’s because the payoff is amazing. Three payoffs, actually. […]
Octagon Mountain House: Nature is Art
I’d always wanted to live in an octagon shaped house, and when I saw the Octagon Mountain House on AirBnB near where we were planning on vacationing in the Shenandoah Valley, I leapt at the chance to rent it for a week, to serve as our homebase while we explored the hiking trails, historic sites […]
Does Daniels, Maryland’s Ghost Town, Actually Have Ghosts?
Daniels is a little known ghost town sprawled on both sides of the Patapsco River within the Patapsco River Valley State Park, which we’ve written about before (several times actually). The hike along the old road into Daniels on the Baltimore County side of the river is about a 4.5 mile there-and-back hike, with a […]