Hiking Hocking Hills

This past Saturday, Anne and I and four of our good friends drove down to Hocking Hills State Park and spent the day hiking.

Ryan and Sarah Meacham were responsible for planning the trip, but Paul and Anita Fairbanks and Anne and I were more than willing to jump in on such a great plan.

It was a perfect day for hiking. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the air had the taste of fall, like biting into a crisp apple.

I said we were in Hocking Hills State Park, but that’s not perfectly accurate. We were planning on hiking Hocking Hills, but when we got there it was pretty crowded, so we ended up hiking through Conkle’s Hollow Nature Preserve and Cantwell Cliffs State Park instead. Bonus points for you if you can find the pins for these parks on the Hocking Hills State Park map. (Hint: They’re both just a little north of the words “Hocking Hills State Park”.) The picture that pops up for Conkle’s Hollow is pretty accurate and is indicative of why I love fall in the East.

We all had a great time enjoying the fantastic scenery, telling jokes to each other (believe it or not, this really is one of the jokes that was told), quoting funny movies, singing random songs, and engaging in some serious freestyle walking. (If you only click on one link in this blog, let it be the previous one.)

We had a picnic lunch in the afternoon and were almost put out of commission by some fantastic brownies that Sarah made for all of us. Okay, okay… I stole someone else’s picture of caramel brownies, but we forgot to take a picture of our own and the only real difference is that one of Sarah’s brownies was roughly the size of six of the brownies in this picture. Mmmm… caramelicious… mmmm…

What? Where was I? Oh yeah… so during our Conkle’s Hollow hike and lunch we saw tons of wildlife, including (but not limited to): a walking stick, a catydid, lots of cool caterpillars, a seal, and, believe it or not, a mongoose. Other notable creatures seen include a spider the size of a baseball (which I shudder to remember) and a horde of ravenous mutant bees. Well, they may not have been mutant bees, but they were certainly ravenous. And ill-tempered.

Cantwell Cliffs had a really cool ravine we hiked through and Anne and I snapped this picture right as it began to descend.

At the base of the ravine, the cliff was hollowed out in a hemi-spherical like fashion, so we were able to walk under the lip of the cliff and look around. It looked like there may have been a small waterfall at one point in time that came over the lip of the cliff and crashed on the rocks about 100 feet below, but either it’s a dry year or there hasn’t been a real waterfall there in years because there was only a trickle going over the edge while we were there. Paul and I decided that it would be a great place to meditate. While I was searching for inner peace, Paul was apparently practicing some type of demonic ritual.

When all was said and done everyone had had a great time.

It was definitely a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon and we definitely plan on making a trip out there again next year.

-Scott

News of the Week (September 25 - October 1, 2006)

Well, I took my second test this past Friday. It went moderately well, but I still didn’t do as well as I’m used to doing. The whole process of studying and taking tests in medical school has been a frustrating learning experience for me. I’ve come to realize that I have two choices when it comes to studying:

1. I can stay on campus and study until past 11:00 pm Monday through Friday and then study all day Saturday to get the scores in the high 90s that I want. OR
2. I can come home at a reasonable hour, see my wife for more than ten minutes a day, and continue to get scores in the 80s.

I continue to choose Anne. Still, it’s been hard for me to realize that I have the capability to do better, but that the cost of doing so would be too high.

Only one other piece of news from this past week…

Help me.

A Sunday Stroll

Anne and I decided that because we’ve been in Columbus for almost 7 weeks now it would probably be a good thing to take some time to walk around our neighborhood and see a little more of where we live. So far, the only places that we’ve really checked out have been the Speedway gas station at the end of our road and Honey Dip Donuts the local donutier (yes, that’s a newly-minted word) that’s on the corner across from Speedway.

Said donutier deserves a few comments of its own. Suffice it to say, the donuts made in this heavenly establishment are nothing short of extraordinary. I am simultaneously thrilled and mortified by their sugary goodness.

Anne and I stopped in on our first day in town to ask for directions to the local grocery store and ended up deciding to split a donut while we were there. This was a very bad idea. The donut was fantastic, the workers were exceptionally friendly, and when they found out that it was our first day in town they even gave us a few donuts for free. This donutier was simply amazing.

I saw a sign for Whole Wheat Donuts and asked what it was all about. The man behind the counter explained that one of their customers was always saying that they wished donuts were healthier, so they decided to make a donut out of whole wheat. This was temptation on a whole new level. No longer could I claim that I didn’t want a donut because it was unhealthy. In fact, I found myself making excuses to have their donuts on the basis of good health.

Conversations like the following were all too frequent:

Anne: Scott, where are you going?
Scott: Hmmm?
Anne: Where are you going?
Scott: Oh. Nowhere special. I was just going for a short walk.
Anne: Honey, you’ve already had seventeen donuts this week.
Scott: Yeah, but I’m feeling a little low on fiber today. And those whole wheat donuts… seriously Anne, they’re whole wheat. That means they’re good for me.

Simply put, I was hooked. Other donuts have since lost their savor. I not only became addicted, I became a donut snob. This from a man raised on week-old donuts (and who in fact actually lost and ate one of his own teeth while eating one of said donuts). If you’re lucky, you may one day get a package from me which has a donut from Honey Dip just for you. Enough about the donuts. Writing about them is making me drool all over my keyboard.

Where was I… oh yeah, our Sunday stroll.

We definitely should have done this earlier, but life has a funny way of getting so busy that you can forget to do the little things.

So, this afternoon we took our camera and went for a stroll. As Anne mentioned, we live right on the border of a really nice part of Columbus called Upper Arlington.

Upper Arlington is kind of like the Croisan Mountain of Salem or the Los Altos Hills of California. The streets are all lined with trees, the neighborhoods are very peaceful, a good number of people are always out walking or jogging, and everyone you meet is very friendly and open. The homes are almost all modest in size, but they’re all immaculately clean and beautifully trimmed. The home shown above is representative of most of the homes we saw on our walk today.

You’ll probably find pictures of Upper Arlington creeping up in my posts every once in a while because I’m pretty enamored with the area. The street we began our walk on today had apple trees growing on the side of the road and the trees were covered with apples, so I grabbed one to eat when we came home.

While we were walking we heard a rumbling behind us and looked back to see this awesome car.

Kudos to Anne for snapping off such a great pic with only two seconds notice.

Apparently it was a company car for Arlington Plumbing. Definitely the coolest plumber’s truck I’ve ever seen.

Just down the next street I snapped this cool picture of the first definitive tree of fall. I’m really excited to see fall in the east again. I still remember the trees that I saw in Pennsylvania during the fall of 2001 as some of the most beautiful things that I have ever seen. Anne and I are planning on taking a trip over to Pittsburgh in about three weeks and when we do we’ll be sure to take some good pictures.

We had been told by some of our neighbors that there was a jogging trail somewhere within the confines of the neighborhood we were wandering in and so we kept our eyes peeled for it. We eventually found what they must have been referring to, but it was definitely not a jogging trail. It was more of a sidewalk that crossed through a few small neighborhoods and ended in a park at the back of a school.

 

 

 

I took this picture of Anne looking cute while overlooking one of the three or four baseball diamonds in the park (note the apple she’s holding that I referred to earlier).

 

 

 

Also, here’s a picture of the both of us at the same spot:

Kudos to Anne (again) for being able to take the picture while also being in the picture.

To get to the park we had to go over some stairs that crossed a pair of railroad tracks that were right next to the school’s park. We were standing there when we took the previous two pictures and when we saw the following:

The car seemed very hesitant as it drove up and I could just imagine the conversation that the man and woman in the car were having.

Woman: Honey, I think we’re lost.
Man: We’re not lost. I know exactly where we are.
Woman: I know where we are too. We’re right in front of a set of stairs. Which our car can clearly not go over.
Man: Well if we’d brought the SUV like I suggested…
Woman: We are not having that conversation again. Can we just ask someone for directions?
Man: No. I told you. I know exactly where we are. I just need to go one street over and we’ll find a way to cross the tracks there.
Woman: *sighing to herself*

Anne and I had a quiet laugh to ourselves and then headed home.

On the way back I saw this beautiful shot.

Hmmm… you know, for only having taken a handful of pictures in my life thus far I really did a pretty decent job on the photos today. Maybe I should drop out of medical school and become a professional photographer… hmmm… nah, probably not.

In any case… thanks for joining us for a Sunday stroll. Hope to see you back next time.

-Scott