Gunpowder Falls State Park, Sweet Air Maryland

The Boston member of our team, Rich, spent the week down in Maryland presenting at a conference in Bethesda.  The conference let out on Thursday midday, so I took a half day, drove down to Brian's house in northern Maryland to meet up with them and the three of us took a stroll around Gunpowder Falls State Park.

It was a beautiful day, with temps in the lower 70s and bright sunshine.  We did a little less than 6 miles in hilly terrain.  The trail we did was the "Boundary Trail", which pretty much follows the edges of the park.  The trail was nice and hilly, wide enough for two walking abreast for much of it, with a mix of your standard forest bed and slightly rocky areas.  It made for a nice pace, quicker than the Pinchot Trail (outlined in an earlier post) due to better footing, but wetter because of the river we had to cross.  Sloshy boots are no fun, but happily it was near the end.

There was one *monster* hill that we did.  We had to take a slight diversion off of the main trail to do it because the trail didn't actually go up the hill, but it was big and it was there and we decided we needed to hurt ourselves a little bit.  It did, too.

That's Rich on the left, and Brian on the right.  I don't usually use a walking stick (no need where I've been hiking) but I was sure glad on a couple of occasions that Brian had his.  It was very helpful for balance on submerged moss-covered rocks on the few river crossings we needed to do.

Tomorrow, my wife and I are doing the Citizen's Advocacy Pheonixville run.  I like the bigger organized runs, it's fun to get out there with a bunch of other people all doing the same thing.  I'll update how that goes in next week's post.