Hey, Are We on the Appalachian Trail?!

Merry Christmas!

For a Christmas Eve day treat, my brother and I bagged the highest peak in New Jersey. Actually, we drove up there. I know, utterly thrilling. Contain yourselves.

No snow? Go trail running on cross country ski trails!

Our plan: run the Monument Trail, or what turned out to be our bastardized version of it (sorry trail planners), at High Point State Park. Within half a mile of starting the run, which we decided to do by heading south-ish first, my brother noticed that we were following white blazes, and not the green/red ones (how timely!) we had originally started following.

Red and green blazes we were supposed to be following.

"Hey!" he called out. "Are we on the Appalachian Trail?! We're going to wind up in Georgia!" 

Uhm, yeah, so here I was, lost on another trail run. For the record, I rarely get lost on hikes. When running, though, I get caught up with trying not to bite it – which I did anyway 2 miles later – that I miss less than obvious blazes. So that's how I found myself, on a lookout tower on the Appalachian Trail...

We made our way back to the trail junction where I got derailed and then rerouted ourselves back onto the Monument Trail. Woohoo! Back on track! Oh, damn, a glacial lake...what direction do we go around this thing? Really, it could have been better marked. Just saying. After figuring out which way to go, the trail crossed a paved park road and headed back into the woods. That's we started hitting the hills.

Hills are not my strength. Looking down at my shoes and hoping that it ends quickly is. So that's how I noticed some neat ribbons of ice on the ground that my brother just plowed through.

Ice ribbons.

We tooled around for about an hour and crossed paths with two other parties, and we were the only runners. Now we're toasty warm and waiting to see what the evening has in store! Hope you and those dear to you are enjoying a wonderful holiday season.