I ran a few minutes yesterday for the first time since, probably July. After the hernia operation last month, the doctor kinda suggested I wouldn't be 'fully' recovered until the next millennium. He said while I could start running, he didn't think pounding on the roads would be a good idea. I've compromised and will start with a few minutes a day and gradually work my way back up to an hour.
My morning and evening walks have included a killer hill close to a half a mile long. I can get up it at a moderately brisk pace although half way up I really start focusing on my breathing and trying to keep my head up.
Last night was in the 40's and today was a bright day full of sunshine close to the 70's with a pretty stiff breeze.
Westmoreland State Park has a series of short inter-connected trails and I did half of them this morning. One thing was of special note to me was the number of holly trees here. I always thought of holly as a bush or ground cover but these trees grow to 10-12 feet. There was one on Assateague Island in Maryland that was over 15 feet tall and close to 10 feet wide with all the various shoots coming out of the ground. The ones here are more like saplings with a thin trunk and branches. There were a bunch of them though, a veritable forest of them growing up under oaks and maples.
The trails were pretty flat with only one steeper pitch and I thought it would make a much nicer run than a walk. The leaves are half off the trees now (or still half on, depending on your point of view) but still provided a lot of color under the sunshine. It was kinda funny because a sign at the trailhead said to be quiet and you might see deer or wild turkeys. With all the leaves under foot a worm couldn't slither by without detection.
It's been a long fall foliage season for me. Mine started in August up in Maine because they had a very dry summer there followed by some pretty cool weather. The season's still going strong here in Virginia too.
The bad thing about the freshly fallen leaves is they can be very slippery when going downhill. I was wondering how many times I'm going to slip and fall on my butt and crack my elbow on the ground in coming weeks. Another bad thing about the autumn leaves is they tend to obscure the trail so you have to pay a little more attention to trail blazes.
The trail wound it's way around a hillside, past a meadow and to a boardwalk through a swamp. On an observation platform I could see a beaver dam in good repair and 50 yards away, a beaver lodge that appeared to have been worked on recently. I dunno if anyone was home though. Even with the dam, there wasn't much water in the area. I could also see the Potomac River a hundred yards away and wasn't aware it was even there before.
When I got back to the campground I could see most of the other campers were either gone or pretty close to leaving. I lounged around my site for a while, chatted with some people and then heard it! The kid from hell was still here. Not even screaming this time, just making noise with a Gawdawful yodel. I wandered over to their area to see what kind of people could have such a kid but then changed my mind. I could see a group of cars down there and it appeared that the tents had been taken down.
I left to finish the park trails around 2:30pm and they were still there. The only thing of note this afternoon was there were several steep inclines and declines along the way and the holly trees had disappeared. These trails led to the boat ramp area and from there I got to climb the killer hill again. The trails must have taken a lot out of my legs because I had to stop half way up and the rest of the way was slow going.
When I got back to the campgrounds the kid from hell was gone! Now I'm looking forward to quiet and peaceful night before hitting the road in the morning.
11/15/99: Peace & quiet my behind! As soon as the sun went down the wind started. It blew at least 20-25 knots all night with gusts up to, who knows, 40 knots or more. It died down around 5am but by 6:30am when I took my morning walk it was back again. It was certainly more wind than I could paddle against. When I got here to the Shenandoah National Park, the camp host said the same thing had happened here, so much of the rest of the state probably got it too.