Hocking Hills

Hocking Hills, down in Ohio near the Kentucky and West Virginia borders, is a cool place to visit. I went with my wife this last weekend to hike there. According to her fitness app on her iPhone, we walked about 7½ miles and 37 flights of steps (equivalent). We did three hikes. I would have actually liked to do another one, but my wife injured her knee many decades ago, and it was feeling pretty sore. She was also just kind of done and tired in general. And then, the rain came in shortly after we called it, so it was probably for the best.

I would really like to go back and see more. This is my second time in the area, but the first time that I was actually in charge of the itinerary. Anyway, here's some pictures.

The place is pretty crowded any time that the weather is good, I think. But they weren't as crowded at every trail. Old Man's Cave and Ash Cave was crazy, but the Conkle's Hollow outer rim trail wasn't that bad (although I think the lower loop was crowded. The parking lot had plenty of people, and we could hear people down below from up on the rim.)

This isn't really exciting hiking, though. This is pull up with your family and a water bottle and walk for an hour or so, before driving to a new location and doing it again. I'm not suggesting that I'm at the point where that's the kind of hiking I'm migrating to, but with my wife and friends, I'll be doing more of that kind of less intense hiking, where I'm guaranteed to be back for dinner and sleep in a bed rather than a tent than I used to do.

Michigan and Ohio

I will almost certainly not do a big backpacking trip this year. I got laid off not long after coming back from the Bighorns, and while I found work again pretty quickly—better work, most likely even—my vacation is a bit limited this year because I'm still new at my new company. Just four months, even. 

However, since I live in the Midwest, my wife got some local small-hike books for us to do. We'll be doing hikes up near Traverse City and the Sleeping Bear Dunes, we'll be doing hikes at Hocking Hills State Park, and maybe we'll try and catch Cuyahoga National Park too. There will be a lot of smaller hikes too, that we'll do with some friends of ours. And there are places in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that my wife and I would love to visit, like Tahquamenon Falls, or Pictured Rocks (you'll note I did pictured rocks with my son-in-law a year or two ago, but I'd like to go back with my wife at a different time of year.)

I've actually been to Hocking Hills before, although I didn't blog about it. I went with my oldest son about 12 years or so ago, and we did (among other things) rock climbing and rappelling there.

I'm not 100% sure I'm going to blog about most of these hikes, but if I can get some good pictures of them, I might.

Other than that, however, I doubt I'll have much to update this blog with this year. Hopefully in 2024 or 2025 I'll be in a position where I can afford to take time off for hiking in the Rockies again.

Bighorn post

I never did make a post on my Bighorn Trip! I actually did a number of different things; after seeing my son and his family further west, I drove back across Idaho, stopping at Shoshone Falls in Twin Falls, which is a pretty cool scenic thing to do that doesn't take very long, and spent some time in the Bear Lake area on the Idaho/Utah border. We did do a couple of smaller hikes, including the Limber Pines trail in Utah and the Bloomington Lake hike in Idaho.

Then I drove to Worland and spent the night in a dive motel, before getting up early the next morning and doing some scenic canyon driving to get to the trailhead. On the way I saw some pretty cool stuff, including Fossil Butte National Monument.

I ended up not really having time to do both of the hikes that I wanted to do, but having a little bit too much time to do just one. So I dragged it out and took my time, but also ended up a little bit earlier than I hoped. Turns out that that was probably for the best. The ups and downs at high elevation really beat me up worse than normal. I guess I'm more out of shape than I was last time I did this.

Anyway, more scenic canyons on the way out to Buffalo, although I didn't take a lot of pictures until I got out of the mountains, looking back at them. And then I ended up doing one more scenic canyon in Spearfish, South Dakota before having to—sadly—say goodbye to the West and drive back East to where work keeps me chained down.

Anyway, here's some of the pictures I took.

Big Horn Mountains

After much belatedness, I'm finally about ready to go do my Wyoming hiking. First, there's a family reunion of sorts in Boise, then another family reunion of sorts at Bear Lake, and then to drop my daughter-in-law and my grandchildren back at my oldest son's house in Boise again... at which point I pick up my daughter's boyfriend, who'll be flying in, and drop off my wife at the airport. This whole process is the big variable right now; I don't know how long it will take, but ideally I'll be able to get to Worland WY from Boise (about a ten hour drive, and that's assuming no stopping near the Tetons for any exploration) before it's too dark on airport day, and then we can drive up to the West Tensleep Trailhead and start hiking the next morning. Of course, another alternative is that we stay close to the Teton area if it takes longer to get out of Boise, and I'll just have to drive a bit more on the next morning before we start hiking. That's not actually the worst thing in the world, as my itinerary for the first day isn't very intense. ~6 miles tops, to get from the Trailhead to the Lost Twin Lakes. And if we're really late getting out that morning, we don't even have to go that far; we could stop at Mirror Lake at ~ 3 miles. The second day I'm a little worried about. We'd backtrack out of the Lost Twin Lakes area, and then instead of going back to the car (although being nearly back at the car) we'd turn north up towards Lake Helen and Mistymoon Lake. To Helen is about 4.5 miles, and to Mistymoon is about 6. But not from Lost Twin Lakes, from the fork in the trail. I can't get to either of them without hiking a good 10 miles or even more the second day, which is probably a bit more than we're in the mood for. Maybe we'll just do it anyway, because we have the whole next day with nothing on the itinerary except exploration. Or maybe we do it anyway, and if we plop down our tents somewhere not quite at Helen Lake, then that's OK too because we've got all next day to play around. 

Then after that third day, we get back to the car and make for Rapid City. We'd come out through the slightly slower and more scenic Crazy Woman Canyon drive, because why not, and then if there's time I'd like to go back to Devil's Tower and the Sylvan Lake and Needles section of the Black Hills in Custer State Park. But if we don't have time, at least I've done those before once. 

The idea situation is that I can get to Worland or near Worland on the Sunday afternoon, but I'm concerned that I might have to make that drive on Monday instead. If so, I won't get back until the next Sunday evening, and I'd prefer to get back on Saturday evening and go to church like normal. But we'll see. Too many variables that I don't know yet, most specifically the times that I'd need to be at the airport. If I can hit the road from Boise by early afternoon, then I can do it all on Sunday. If not, I'll have to either cut a day from my itinerary or not get back until Sunday evening. 

My son is also apparently trying to hold me to an offhand comment I made that I'd like to head up to Stanley and see the Sawtooths in the summer of 2023. I would like to do that, but whether I really will or not was something that I hadn't taken too seriously until he obviously remembered that comment and was hoping to get involved with that trip as well. 

Anyway, I nabbed this from a GIS, but it's someone else's hike to the Lost Twin Lakes area. It's curious that this is what most of the pictures look like. Does nobody go to the second of the lost twin lakes?

Pictured Rocks

The summer got away from me with way too much going on. Never got out to the Bighorns, sadly. Maybe next summer. However, it looks like I'll be able to spend a short time at Picture Rocks National Lakeshore in a couple of weeks, hopefully for peak fall color but not yet very cold weather. 

I'm going with a hiking buddy, my daughter's boyfriend, who hasn't ever really been hiking before, but who has wanted to for a long time. I don't know yet exactly what we're going to do, but I've been noodling with a few ideas. I think of it as his trip that I'm kinda long for the ride on, but the reality is that because its his first time, I suspect he's going to hope and expect me to kind of take the lead on a lot of things. Anyway, we'll work it out. I don't want to tell him where to go if he's already done his own research, but if he hasn't, I've got some ideas.

It seems like a pretty last minute thing; we're going in about a week, and we don't have backcountry campsite reservations yet or a route. But if we do my proposal, we'll start out at the Miners Falls parking lot, go see the Miners Falls, come back to the car and roadwalk (or drive, I suppose. No reason why not) to Miner's Beach and Miner's Castle parking lot, and use that as our trailhead. It's only about 6-7 or so miles to Mosquito River campsite. While I dislike the name of that place, I suspect that by a little bit later in October (not to mention the higher latitude) there hopefully won't actually be any mosquitos. 

From there, we can actually leave our tents up two days, and do two day-hiking routes; the Chapel Lake area and the Beaver Basin area. We'll drive up and stay the night on Wednesday, do the initial hike in on Thursday, hike all around on Friday, hike out on Saturday and get back very late Saturday night. Not the most impressive trip, but a good quickie. I long weekend (sorta) away, and an introduction to a first-time hiker. Friday might be relatively big miles (by relatively I mean maybe more than 10) but given that we can do that with just little day packs for some food, water and a handful of essentials, it shouldn't be a big deal.

Some route noodling

I know that I have a terrible tendency to overdo my routes. There are too many things that I want to see, and I end up planning big routes where I'm forced to walk ten miles or more a day in the mountains, climbing thousands of feet, and I end up not doing it, because I get tired, altitude sickness, and just not in the mood, or a combination of all of the above. That said, this "route" includes more options than I'm liable to be able to use, by a long shot.

It's really two routes; either the Lost Twin Lakes destination via Mirror Lake, or the Florence Lake/Bomber Mountain destination via Helen, Marion, Mistymoon and Gunboat lakes. I do kind of like the second of those, but it's obviously about 50% or so longer than the other option.

Anyway, here's the link to the Caltopo I drew for it.

https://caltopo.com/m/3KG0

And here's an image or two to keep us inspired.