Hiking

The day after Thanksgiving, my friend and I went hiking (have to do something with all that good food, eh?) Anyway, we chose this hike that was 6.2 miles back to a lake. We got an early start so we would have plenty of daylight, and wore lots of layers because it was close to freezing when we started. (I had on 5 layers, which is pretty unusual for me.) Anyway, I am a firm believer in the faster you walk, the faster you get warm, so we started at a fairly good clip. The first 2 miles were a breeze, mostly kind of a gentle uphill that wasn't noticeable at all. (except on the way back when it was all downhill.) The last 4 miles were uphill (literally) with no switchbacks. It was so fun!! Switchbacks are great, but sometimes you just want to get up the hill. At one point on the way up though, I thought we would never get there (but we obviously did as seen by the picture.)
The lake was beautiful and worth every minute of hiking and getting up early. Lunch was eaten on a rock by the lake's edge and then a well earned rest basking on a rock in the sun (which was colder than it sounds, because of radiation in the rock which is a tidbit of information I learned that day.) Then, after that refreshing break, we hiked back down the trail. And, while I hate to admit it, on the way down I tripped on a tree root, but caught myself before I fell. So, we basically did 12.4 miles in 4 hours, and had a lot of fun. The only mishap occured because I have not been able to find any new shoes, and the ones I have are pretty beat up and they rubbed a hole in the heel of one of my socks and into my heel, causing blood to soak into my shoe and sock. I didn't bother saying anything because, well, that's part of hiking, but I got caught treating it with my first aid kit before we headed down the mountain. Oh well.