4th of July 2010

Shawnee State Park
Schellsburg, PA

All forecasts predicted it was going to be 100 degrees plus all weekend. All I know is it was HOT HOT HOT.

We took ½ day on Friday and were there and set up by 2:30. Short drive just up hill all the way.

There are 2 geo-caches there on the Lakefront Trail, so we biked down to the lake. When I say down, I mean OMG this is the side of a mountain (yeah, so a little drama here-but, it was a really steep hill). Problem was, even as we were doing the down part, I knew that the up part was going to be a killer. The Lakefront Trail is 3.4 miles long, and obviously circles around the lake and also over a dam.

The first cache took us back a second trail at which point we had to ditch the bikes and hike that trail for a good half mile. After that, there was a good distance of bushwacking involved before finding the cache. You know me and the poison ivy/oak/sumac hysteria, butch just keeps telling me that it’s not poison. I think he knows to lie to me even if I am standing in it.

Of course, after all that tromping, I forgot to take a picture of the cache, so this is the only picture I got of it.  Um , yeah, its thataway!

The second cache was near the beach. To get to it, you had to climb up a path, and then hang off the edge of the cliff (okay, but it was a sheer hill) by hanging onto a tree, and the cache was in a hidey hole at the bottom of the tree. I was tromping through while butch was down below, and once I decided it had to be right around here, he spotted it.

We finished the loop at the beach (that just cracks me up-you're at a lake, there is no beach at a lake-it’s just some sand trucked in and dumped), we hadn’t thought to throw the bathing suits in the bag, but we were content to plop down under a shade tree and relax a while. And the hill that was so great going down....it was killer going up.  There was no way you could ride a bike up it, so we'd push the bikes for a while, rest a while, and keep on going.

The night sky there was really clear and the stars were just amazing. Even saw a couple of shooting stars.

It was so hot that we’d hike around in the morning a bit and just try to stay cool in the afternoon. We left Monday around noon & didn’t have much trouble with the holiday traffic, which was way cool. (even if the day wasn't)