#56 Complete: Went Hiking, Planned Soup Parties

Resolution: Stretch Your Legs and Go Hiking

Today should have been a little cheat-ey for us because we’ve taken to hiking like chubby kids to cotton candy (we’re chubby so we’re allowed to say that). However, on Valentines Day Patrick and I took a hike that was a bit.. erm.. optimistic. As “beginners”, we chose a pretty treacherous trail that lasted about 90 minutes too long (ok it was only 90 minutes in total) but felt more along the lines of 7 hours. It was only 3.5 miles (mostly uphill and climbing, wah, wah, wah) but felt like 7.

My point is that we were still a little broken up about that hike. Is there such a thing as post-traumatic stress from hiking? If there is, then I’m self-diagnosing. We’ve got that.

So since that day we’ve been taking the familiar trails. And we’ve been remembering water and protein bars too.

In honor of this resolution, we went for the gold again. No 30 minute trails this time. This time we hiked for two hours, 3.6 miles. Here’s a link to our GPS-tracked trip and photos along the way (which doesn’t seem to work in Chrome).

And if you’re a regular hiker maybe you think we’re a couple of wussies, but if you saw us rolling our tubby butts around the woods like a couple of champions you’d be impressed too.

So in Weetamoo Woods in Tiverton, RI, starting at Pardon Grey Reserve (which has the neatest little cemetary) we took off. The white trail, then the yellow trail, then the green trail, and the red trail, then the blue trail and back to the yellow trail and the white trail. We conquered that mutha*.

The best part is really that long the way we discovered new places we hadn’t found before. For example, on the yellow trail there’s this giant cliff of rocks with this awesome cavernous tree in the middle of it. We’re thinking of having a soup lunch there one afternoon. Perhaps planing a wine-bottle geocache in the trunk of the tree. All things to ponder.

Further in, there’s a place called “High Rock” in between the yellow, green, red and blue trails. This rock is like a city. It’s freaking huge, bigger than a house. So, again with the soup date.

In any case, winter hiking is awesome. I hope it stays cold longer honestly because there’s just something so divine about keeping cool while exercising for 120 minutes straight.