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| Hiking | 3.47 Miles |
147 AEG |
| | Hiking | 3.47 Miles | 1 Hour 44 Mns | | 2.04 mph |
| 147 ft AEG | 2 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | Took the whole family up to my camp in northern PA for the first time since 2015, getting out of AZ heat and the western PA humidity, at least at night. This loop trail is only about 4 to 5 miles from the camp and is just over 3 miles in length. The first time I took them up there, we did a very short segment of the trail when the kids were very little. They’re pretty much adults now so they obviously have no memory of it.
We did the entire loop, which is actually 2 loops that we did as a figure 8. The longer northern loop circles around a pond, but you only see the pond as the trail hugs the southern shore. Several sections of the trail have long sections of wooden walkways which I assume are there due to the swampy, boggy nature of the soil in this area.
At the start of the longer loop near the pond we saw a black rattlesnake laying on one of the wooden walkways. It was the first time I’ve seen a rattlesnake in PA. Fortunately the head was in the grass next to the walkway and all we could see was the tail. It was very fat and almost kind of flat, which made us wonder it might be dead. We stayed in the grass for a bit to give a wide berth. Once Dmitri started to walk on the wooden walkway we found out it wasn’t dead because it started buzzing. We all quickly moved on and got away ASAP. I did manage to get one pic before all that happened.
Later on near the northern end of the trail, I had lost the trail for a bit since it was overgrown in many spots. I stopped to check out the GPS and we heard something moving in the brush just a few feet from us. It was a 10 point buck in felt that hadn’t heard up walk up and was now very startled. It spun around and quickly sprinted away through some pretty thick forest. It happened so fast that I wasn’t able to get a picture, but we all got a really great view of it right in front of us, which I was happy with.
Everything else went smoothly without incident. The grass was high throughout almost the entire hike, making the boots we packed a necessity and we were all wet below the knees. Weather was a bit warm and humid but still pleasant compared to the AZ heat blazing at that time. |
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