Into the Woods

The day before our memorial walk, EH and I decided that we should do something fun! So we jumped in the old car and went hiking at the Cranberry Lake Preserve. I'm not really sure when we caught the hiking bug but we've been doing it seriously since our first hiking trip on our honeymoon.

I'm smiling here because I'm going downhill

We hiked in the El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico. It was one of those hotel excursion trips, you know the ones in the cute brochures by the check-in desk, where the people at the hotel tell you it's "easy and fun" and then folks sign up for it thinking it'll be "easy and fun."  It totally wasn't easy but it WAS fun and HARD. We hiked down to the rainforest floor and then had to hike all the way back up. By the end of it I was pretty sure I was dead. But after that hike, a fire was lit. I think the endorphins from completing the hike lit the match. So from time to time we like to go hiking to challenge ourselves and enjoy the outdoors.

You see that beatific look on EH's face... He loves hiking! He kept telling me were going to be urban adventurers...

 

We took the blue trail that ran by the lake. I wasn't into their directional signs. They were small and easy to miss. We got turned around a few times. I couldn't even see the number on this tree because it was the same color as the tree!

I was so ready to carve our names in this tree but EH didn't want me "defacing nature."

The good news here is that I'm wearing my lucky number 7 shirt. The bad news is that I wore cut off shorts to go hiking, which is ALWAYS a bad idea. My legs were tore up when I got home.

We finally found the lake!! Yay!!

look at me! I'm so short, I'm standing on a tree..tee hee

This trail was pretty awesome so we'll probably go back and do a harder one. There were some hairy moments when we thought we would never find the nature lodge we started out from but there were also some beautiful sights...

The leaves are turning....end of summer...BOOOOO!!

There was a point in the trail when we had to crawl under a fallen tree. I had to get this shot of EH because he absolutely HATES getting dirty. A great day! Can't wait to go back!