A Summer Walk
It was a very hot weekend in early July - almost too hot even for me to be outside. So I thought it would be great to spend an afternoon walking in the shade of the forests of the Pocono Mountains. Our daughter Gina is home for the summer and decided to come along for the hike.
It was an adventure just getting there. We got on the highway and immediately came to a crawl. It took an hour to go one mile! We should have turned around. But we kept going and eventually got to the Poconos - heading towards the waterfalls of Childs Park. But the sign said Childs Park - closed. That didn't make sense - it's summer - it was obviously a mistake, so we kept going. We passed two more signs saying Childs Park was closed - they really need to update those signs and give current information. Otherwise people could waste time driving. We finally got to Child's Park - and you guessed it - it was closed due to damage from the Nor'easters in March. We should have turned around.
We certainly didn't drive this far just to turn around. So we backtracked a little and pulled into the Pocono Environment Education Center (PEEC) and decided to hike one of the trails there. After whining a little about not being able to see the waterfalls at Childs Park, I decided to enjoy the walk we were on.
We came across a calm scene where the slow moving stream tumbled over moss covered rocks down a small gorge. Really, it's only about ten feet high - not a dramatic gorge but somehow beautiful in it's simplicity. The light was filtering through the trees landing on some of the moss and turned it into a place where I could have sat quietly for a couple hours.
It ended up not being the hike I planned - it ended up being better!