A nice day for a hike

Tammy and I went out to Shenandoah for a hike today. We were worried that the heat from a couple days back would persist into the weekend, but the day turned out to be beautiful. It was never really hot at all.

So where did we hike? We went into the northern third of Shenandoah National Park (via route 211 and Sperryville) and hiked a five mile loop. The hike does not really have a name because it is actually a loop formed when you string together about five different trails: Appalachian Trail, Sugarloaf Trail, Pole Bridge Link Trail, Keyser Run Fire Road and Appalachian Trail one more time. One book I have calls it the Sugarloaf-Keyser Run Fire Road-Hogback Loop because of the trails you walk, and the fact that you cross over Hogback Mountain during the last part of the hike. Although the trails are not labeled, you can visualize the hike here via GoogleMaps.

The hike went through good bear territory, but no bears were seen. There were good numbers of the birds that usually hang around in the mountains of Virginia during the summer. There were tons of caterpillars, chomp chomping away at broad leaved trees (it was literally raining leaf bits). One even tried chomp, chomping away on my calf. And did I mention that it was a beautiful day?

[edit: corrected one spelling mistake and one instance of a trail name]

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