Fall Excursion

Well, I survived another one of our annual fall hikes. I swear Lairds Knob is getting higher every year and my knees are telling me today they're not much on the rock climbing any more . We had pretty nice weather but once we got on top of the mountain the valley was pretty hazy. Didn't see much game as it's still pretty dry and the five of us made a lot of noise. It did seem like we couldn't go 25 yards without coming across some bear scat.

One of the many rock slides on the side of the mountain.

National Forest corner marker.

Debating whether we really want to do this.

The picture doesn't show it well but the big rock in the middle is balanced on the small one below it

Thought it was neat how the trunk on this old tree was twisted.

Big rock near the top of the mountain.

On top

Buzzards waiting on one of us to have a heart attack.

My house is in about the center of this pic.

Snowy Hike

We took our annual fall hike Sunday in some very unexpected ground cover...SNOW. While we occasionally have some snow in October we usually don't have 4 to 6". And it was the first time in over 25 years we had snow to hike through. Most of the top of the mountain had 8 to 10" of snow but it began to melt pretty quickly once the sun came up. Of course that also caused the snow hanging on the trees to fall on us during most of the trip.

The crew wondering what the hell are we doing out here.

The sun just coming up in the east. 

Looking out to the west across the valley. I was a little

disappointed in how hazy it was. 

U.S. survey marker on top of Grubbs Knob.