Hike 4 - Section #4

Alex thought that this would be a rather uneventful section of the trail - at least according to the MidState Trail Guide, in which several sections were shown to be on roadways.  As it turns out, however, the trail has been re-routed in several places, reducing the "road" experience significantly.  We started to suspect this by noticing that some of the trail sections and landmarks did  not match up to what we were reading in the guide (4th edition, 2002).  We also noticed that these sections seemed to be less worn and that the marker paint and signage (those ever-present yellow triangles) appeared much newer.  After I'm finished with my "thru" hike this season, I think it will be time for me to buy an updated trail guide (see www.midstatetrail.org).

Alex & I are about to start our hike at the Graffiti bridge where we lift off last week.

Lots of beautiful stone walls winding through the forest.

We found some wide open spaces we weren't expecting.

Look!  Cows!

The trail actually goes over this stone wall.

These are more cows.  What you can't see is that they're actually stampeding towards us.  No kidding!  They were heading for the cows seen in a previous photo, who also started running toward them.  The trail we were hiking was in between these two groups of stampeding cows (yikes!), but thankfully guarded by wire fencing and a stone wall.

This is an old gravel pit that we saw on the map, now grassland.

This is one of those brand new trail markers I mentioned at the beginning.  Even the nails are brand new.

The trail crosses Rt 2 here.  Alex is ahead of me as usual.

Did I mention I love photos of babbling brooks?  This water was really moving.

Ending the day at the babbling brook is even better (see car through the trees).

Today's tally (trail re-routings notwithstanding) was 4.91 miles in 1:42.  I am up to milepost 18.41.  Only 74 miles to go!