Hakunah Matata

This weekend I went hiking. Yeah!!! It was so nice to get out of the city for a few hours. The scenery was incredible. Lots of colors. There are a lot of different kinds of trees out here, I noticed.

We went to a place called Partridge Run. We didn't see any Partridges though. In fact, I saw two sparrows and I believe that was all the wildlife we saw the whole hike. Oh well. It was still beautiful scenery and a nice day.

At first glance, it all kind of reminded me of Logan Canyon. After we started our hike, though, I realized it's not quite Logan Canyon; New York has a lot more diversity in their plant life. Well, in every kind of life, come to think of it, but they also have lots of different kinds of trees, as I said earlier. It was really pretty.

Another thing I noticed that was different from home were these little stone walls. Mike said they were built back in the colonial days, or some far away past, and they were meant to mark property lines. They were kind of cool though. They were quite old, as stated, so they were kind of crumbling and some of them had moss growing over the stones.

This is Arnaud posing on one of those cool little walls. I really liked them; they made me feel like I was walking through colonial farm land or something. Anyway, we also crossed this old bridge that had grass growing over it.

That was kind of cool too.

Aside from our colonial construction discoveries, we had some great adventures. We had to cross this creek a couple of times, but usually there was a log or something we could use as a bridge (or an actual bridge). We came to one particular juncture that had no bridge. And no logs. And not enough rocks. So went down stream a bit to see if we could find a better place to cross. No dice. So Arnaud and Mike decided they were going to build a bridge.

It was great. I tried to post some videos, but they wouldn't play once I had them posted. Anyway, they're on facebook if you want to watch them. So, anyway, this man came to tell us we were on private property (not his). He also informed us it was free range, and Michelle thought that meant in regards to guns, like "it's free range out here, so duck and cover." When I explained to her that it had to do with cattle, and the man told us they had bulls, she wasn't feeling much better about it. But we got out of the free range, and all was well. No one got shot or gored (although, just as an aside, apparently in New York you are allowed to target practice in state parks. I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to do that in Utah. Anyway, just FYI...). There was actually a bridge there, but the man told us a storm had come through a bit ago and wiped it out, so the only way we were going to get across was to wade in the water. So we did. And it was cold. Michelle and I made the guys go first; once we saw that they survived, we decided to wade in ourselves. It was kind of fun watching everyone get across. It was less fun on the way back when we had to cross the river again. My pants were almost dry....

It was a great hike, and I had a lot of fun. I'm glad someone finally agreed to go with me! There are actually quite a few hikes in the area, and the Adirondacks are only like an hour or so away, so I'll have to go check those out someday as well! Anyway, here are a couple of pictures from the hike. Enjoy!