Travels, Life In Albany, 2010

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In mid August I joined another www.couchSurfing.org hike with John. John did a phenomenal job of organizing the logistics with eight people meeting in four cars at two locations and then shuffling cars so that we could ride back to the hike start from the end. Awesome. We met early at 8AM which entailed me leaving while it was still dark. There was a long drive on Rt 30 which winds around Pepacton Reservoir, slow but very pretty (as shown above). John also sent us a google map (above) with the start and end point. We met at the intersection of Rt 30 and Cat Hollows Rd.	View Delaware County Catskills hike in a larger map
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There were cool ferns that looked like miniature Christmas trees (above) and a tree that had been blown over (above). One of our group, Jolene, specializes in herbs and their various uses. Here she is with a sample of her collection of Laetiporus sulphureus, the "chicken of the woods" which would be her dinner. It is an orange polypore with fairly soft flesh, widely distributed in North America (though it turns out there are several different species which is not so surprising given the lack of sexual exchange of genetic material for fungii). It was so fun hiking with her as she shared her wealth of knowledge. Of course all of this land was once farmland as can be seen by the wall below that went through the woods.	=0=
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John was joined on this hike with an old hiking friend, Susan (above), who hadn't hiked in ages but was prepping for a camping trip later with John and his wife. She wore a full skirt and carried a shoulder bag, but did just fine all the same. We had lunch at a really nice overlook. As the Catskills and Adirondacks are established in the New York state constitution to be 'forever wild', they do maintain trails, but won't maintain views. The mountains generally aren't steep enough to have cliffs that trees can't obscure, making great views pretty rare.	=0=
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This page was last updated on September 15, 2010.