The first hike of the year and season! At Deer Lakes in Frazer and West Deer Townships in Westmoreland County, PA. A storm blew by the day before: very windy but not a ton of rain. There was enough rain, though, to make a lot of spots muddy. Except for one spot that took us onto a service road and behind a maintenance building, it was all trees, all the time. Since the cold weather only recently broke, there wasn’t any leafy shade; the sun slapped us through the slats between tree trunks.
Some establishing shots at the beginning. Note the clear skies:
The blazes were on the trees, but once in a while we saw these new-looking posts with blazes on them. Never saw them done this way before. Interesting:
A big fella:
This was a VLSPA: a Very Large Solar Panel Array. My term for it, and it probably wasn’t all that big compared to some others:
Two shots of a big boy that looked to have fallen very recently, as it hadn’t been cleaned up from the path:
We weren’t sure what this was. It looked to be clay or ceramic, but I have no idea about these things. Size 9 1/2 mens’ boot for reference:
Those are Wolverine boots, by the way. I didn’t know how insanely priced they are, but I got them maybe 4 or 5 years ago on store-closing clearance for $30. I don’t do construction or anything heavy duty, so I don’t know how they fare with that stuff, but they are solid hiking/walking boots.
He wanted me to take a photo of his shoes near the end:
The route. We didn’t go all that fast, and we stopped to snack, retrace steps after taking a wrong turn, etc. Three miles isn’t terribly long but it’s a lot longer when you haven’t done a hike in a while:
2 Comments
Your shots indicate the woods are mostly clear of underbrush. I’ve seen just a few places in Oklahoma like that, but the vast majority of woodlands in the central belt running north-south across OK are choked with underbrush and thorny vines. That’s part of the meaning of “Cross Timbers”, the name for that area. Thanks for sharing these.
We do have underbrush here but it’s not very widespread, I don’t think. I’ve been on trails here that have some but it’s not all throughout. The places that do have them definitely have a different feel, I suppose because underbrush needs a specific localized climate to live and spread.
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