September Means Great Hiking is Here!

Fall is officially around the corner and that means the temperature and humidity are going to start staying in those super comfortable zones. The leaves are going to start their annual shift to gorgeous golds, oranges, and reds. Most importantly, the bug populations are going to soon be getting thinner and thinner!

CJP_5210 August was a good month to get outdoors and I hope many of you had the opportunity to do so. I had the annual outdoor adventure with the wife’s family, and snuck out to Brushy Creek State Recreation Area to check out their middle section of the trails. I did their lake loop last year, and plan to hike their southern sections in the next couple weeks. Once I finish that I will have completed the park and can add it to the queue for posting. They claim to have 45 miles of trails, so a bit to do in a single dayhike.

CJP_5449 We also attempted to introduce baby girl to tent camping; it went ok, mostly. She had a blast playing outside, watching dad build the fire, etc. Unfortunately there were some not very fun parts. The first was our fault not trying to figure out a better way to feed her in advance. We opted for cooking her supper, but that takes a little longer on a canister stove than at home. Let’s just say she has her mother’s patience… maybe PB&J next time for her. The other hiccup was that once it was time to go to bed. She wasn’t nearly ready for that and it was quite rough and loud. We waited until around 11 pm before finally deciding it was a good effort, but she wasn’t going to sleep, which meant we weren’t going to sleep. We broke down the camp, stuffed it in the car, put her in her car seat and on home we headed. She was asleep by the time we hit the highway… We had her home and in bed 30 minutes later. We gave her a taste of her future at least, she’ll come around. 😉

As far as The Iowa Hiker media, I completed a post and video on the Pine Creek Cabins we stayed at for the annual trip. I have been plugging away at processing the photos from our Colorado adventure in July when I have the time, over halfway through now. My wife has been prodding me to get them done so she can post them to friends and family, so it shouldn’t be much longer…

Capture Going forward I have an ambitious couple months coming up. I am using up quite a bit of vacation time, giving me plenty of opportunity to get out there and chew up some miles finally. Not to mention I should get some time to sit down at the computer get some editing done while I recover! Unfortunately, my goal of hitting 212 miles was probably a little too lofty for this year. One park has had extensive trail damage due to some heavy rains and is currently closed for repairs, and the two long “tours” as I call them, are a little harder to plan for than anticipated. (I also didn’t know I was going to get promoted and that my schedule was going to take a hit when I made that goal.) So that’s 70-some miles getting pushed to next year. It does leave me with 160ish for the year though, which is still a gain on last year.