At the Trail Head
The history of this place is pretty interesting (see info on the link), including a tree that may have been part of the Underground Railroad. We entered the trail on Hope Trail, and at the T intersection made a right to go toward the Wet Meadow area. A few minutes later, Brigid takes the Road Less Travelled:
See that purple triangle shape up the trail to the right? We followed her up that path, which spurred off to a steep hill. It's hard to see the degree of the slope in the picture, but I think it's probably at least 40*:
After a few moments of "I'm King of the Mooouuunntain!" and "I can see MomMom's HOUSE from here!!" we reversed course and went back to that T intersection. A group of 3 women with some young girls and babies were coming into the same area. They asked if we were the Girl Scouts, because they had seen the magnet on our van. As it turns out, the two older girls were Girl Scouts too! Coincidentally, I happened to be wearing my Rock the Mall t-shirt. Their girls had just been to the B.I.G. Celebration. And the mama of the Girl Scouts also has a family hiking blog! So, what do a group of Girl Scouts do when they run into other Girl Scouts they haven't met??
"Make new friends" of course!
We explored the area with them for a good while, happy to have "veterans" along to point out lots of cool things, like this tree growing like a trident:
Two of the ladies with sleepy wee little ones bid us goodbye, and the rest of our new friends stopped to eat lunch for a bit. We were planning on lunching with MomMom, so back into the woods we went, this time from the Doug Hefty trail (note: Read about him on the Saddler's Woods website, neat story!). The stream was calling them, and tried to claim someone's sneakers:
The rest of the time we just meandered around, enjoying the beautiful weather.
Emancipation Beech, a 300 year old tree
(read more about it on the website)
Overall, a nice day out, especially with the surprise of Making New Friends....
It was nice meeting you yesterday. Saddlers Woods is indeed a special place!
ReplyDeleteMy hiking blog can be found at:
http://rambleonhiking.wordpress.com/
Happy Hiking!
Allie
Hi Allie! It was a lot of fun meeting you and the rest of the girls. I checked out your blog and it gave me some inspiration for trips farther afield, thanks!
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