ohiopyled...

i had no proctoring obligations yesterday, so carson and i went down to ohiopyle state park for a little hiking, you know, as practice for the big AT venture.

now, here's the point where i admit that i've never really gone hiking before. i mean, sure i've gone "hiking", like when you take big walks in the woods and stuff. but as far as the hiking boots and the packs and the carrying lots of water and gear? never done that. so yesterday i filled my pack with 5 liters of water (in containers -- i didn't just turn the faucet on into the main compartment) and a bunch more stuff than i needed as an exercise in hiking with a good amount of weight on my back.

the whole hike was really awesome. ohiopyle is freaking beautiful:


see?

and take a look at this:


it's a tree that carson and i happened upon along one of the trails. i made carson stand in the picture for scale's sake.

i kinda loved the whole trekking bit. carson and i both found some terrific sticks to aid our walking (and i realized that there's no reason to throw a ton of cash at fancy trekking poles when there are awesome sticks all over the woods to use). i realized that i'd much rather go uphill with a pack on my back than downhill -- downhill there's too much potential for falling, erm, ass over teakettle. [i only fell down (like really fell down) once.]

also, we did a bit of fjording (me with shoes off, carson with shoes on), drank some river water, saw some awesome rapids, wore lots of sunscreen and bug repellant, and passed a lot of local teenagers who looked like they came to the woods to smoke the pot.

and as a little side adventure, since it was on the way to ohiopyle, we stopped off to walk around the grounds of this place:


look familiar? so, yeah, we had a really nice day, it was fantastic to be in the woods and away from law school -- i'm really looking forward to the AT hike.