a trail to self discovery...

  "Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try." As I woke on Monday morning, I laid in bed contemplating the day ahead. If I really wanted to complete my August Grid and my third round of the 48, I would have to get my ass into gear. Mentally the thought of hiking one mountain and coming back to my car, driving then to another mountain to hike is exhausting. I hit the start button on my coffee maker to get motivated. I took my time drinking my coffee and getting my pack ready to go. As soon as I was up and moving the motivation just came. My legs still tired from the day before, I just reminded myself to take it easy. Cannon is 4 miles round trip from Kinsman Ridge Trail. It's a steep 2 miles up and 2 miles back. But I knew it was doable. The forecast had showed clearing skies for the entire day. I arrived at the parking lot around 8:30am. I jumped out of the car and hit the trail. The day before on Isolation was quite cold, windy, rainy and frankly, brisk. It f

  " And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow." Sunday evening we packed our overnight bags and changed our plans a bit as a tropical storm was heading our way. We were going to get rained out on day 2 of our overnight. We decided we would try and hike Macomb, the 3 Dix, and Hough in the first day and leave early the next morning to beat the down pours. I checked the forecast on many different sites. It said Sunny on the higher peaks on Monday. Light rain starting at 8am Tuesday morning and heavy by 11am. We got to the trailhead around 7:00am. We drove as far as we could to drop our packs so we didn't have to carry them the entire 2.5 mile road walk. (The road was closed due to COVID-19)  We geared up and decided to take our bikes the 2.5 miles to the trailhead where we would proceed to stash them in the woods and hike 2 miles into camp.    Once at camp, we set up our stuff and swapped out to smaller Sea to Sum

  "The Wild Woman has a deep love of Nature, A love for the Ancient Mother, though possibly misunderstood, it has always been in her. When she goes into the wilderness, a part of her is Soul is going home." Friday morning, I dropped Rickypup off at his boarder for the upcoming days. Laura and I had been planning a trip the first week in August to the Adirondacks for the last year. This time, we would stay 5 days. We met up in Vermont at a Park and Ride where we would leave one car and carpool the rest of the way. This always makes the ride a bit more enjoyable. We arrived Friday afternoon around 2pm to our place of stay. For the first time we decided to take it the next step up. We booked a room at the Rooster Comb Inn. It's a shared space, but it was quite frankly, really nice! As we pulled in we met the owner who was a sweet polish woman. We brought all of our gear in to plan for the days ahead. The plan was to hike the Lower Great Range in a single day. A long day, but