Trip Report: A Birthday Hike to Oscar Blevin's Farm

This past Saturday, I celebrated another year of life. In honor of that, I decided that I wanted to go hiking with my girls. The night previous, we hadn't a clue as to where to go. We wanted to make sure that where ever we ended up going, there was a destination for Bug to get down and explore, so that hiking becomes a "Fun" activity for her and something that she'll want to continue to do.

The next morning, we awoke and hung out around the house doing the usual morning routine and overall we were just being lazy. After a little while though, we started to get things ready and packed into the car so that we could head out to go hiking.

The weather was perfect. Mostly sunny and in the mid 70's. We finally hit the road just after noon and decided that we would head up to The Big South Fork NRRA. We had a couple different trails going through our heads, and finally decided that we would hike the Oscar Blevin's Farm Loop. This was a relatively easy to moderate trail that we hadn't done since Kiddo was about 5 or 6. That happened to be the year that we beat a nasty storm front off the trail and watched an amazing light show put on by mother nature. What we didn't realize at the time, was that the light show was a precursor to the destruction that hit the area we had been hiking in later that evening.

Gear Review: Osprey Poco Plus Kid Carrier Backpack

Before our Dinah Bug came along, we were hiking mad. We almost covered 100 miles the year before Bug was born. While Robin was pregnant, we covered some good miles up until the third trimester. After she was born, our time on the trail was practically non-existent. How do you hike with an infant. Our answer was, you don't, especially in the winter. After the six month mark though we were getting the itch to get back on the trail. To be honest, we had the itch for much longer, but we didn't want anything happening to Bug and we didn't have a real good carrier to take her on the trail with.

Enter the Osprey Poco Plus kid carrier pack. This was the answer we were looking for to get us back on the trails even though it we knew it would be at our former intensity. We knew 6+ miles were out of the question for now. Neither of us had ever hiked with a wee little one in tote. You may be asking, what about Kiddo? Well I didn't have her out on the trail until she was 3 and that was very shortly after I started to get into hiking, and before I met Robin, so needless to say I was very green, but I digress.

Race Report/Camping Fail: 2013 Panther Creek Challenge

It was the weekend before Memorial Day, and KTC's Treadin' Trodden Trails series was making a stop atPanther Creek State Park for it's annual 10 mile Panther Creek Challenge. This was one of the original 3 trail races I had planned on running this year (To date I've run in 6 and I've still yet to run the last of the original 3 I planned on running and who knows how many more before the year is out). With the Challenge approaching I had the hair brained idea that we could turn it into a weekend of camping, fun right?

Since it was at Panther Creek State Park which was a 2 hour drive from home, it would be awesome to already be at the park on race morning and then have the rest of the weekend to camp with the family. On paper, most of our crazy ideas sound great. However, we've quickly learned that with toddler, those ideas don't always work out the way we plan. Race weekend had finally arrived and I had taken a 1/2 day on that Friday. When I got home, Robin had some stuff ready (another change since our Little Bug came along, Robin would have already had the car loaded and ready to go), so I got straight to helping with the final packing and then loading of the car. After all was said and done, we were packed, out the door, and pulling into our campsite by around 5pm or so.

Trip Report: Eleventh Anniversary Hike - Interpretive Trail Loop FHSP

Robin and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary back in April. We didn't get each other anything fancy or what-not, but what we did do, was all the better. Considering I had been out of work for over a month while Robin was recovering from back surgery, our finances were looking a bit thin and well we really couldn't afford to do much of anything. So with the lemons we had we made lemonade by spending the day with our girls, outside.

We decided that since it had been almost a month since Robin's surgery, and she hadn't set foot on a trail since late January, we would head to one of our favorite State Parks and give the mostly pain free feelings a test drive for Robin. We got everything ready including all of Bug's stuff (diapers, bottles, etc.) and loaded up in the vehicle and headed out for Frozen Head State Park to hike the Interpretive Loop Trail or as Kiddo has dubbed it, the Interpretive Dance Loop Trail. Teenagers can be so funny sometimes.

Gear Review: Terramar Body-Sensor Helix Shirts

Some of you may know that I am a proud member of the Terramar Tribe. For those of you who don't, well now you do. What's the Terramar Tribe you ask? That's the brand ambassador program for Terramar Sports. Terramar Sports is the maker of wonderful base-layers that help to fuel our adventures by keeping us warm in the winter and cool in the hot summer. Regardless of the fact that I'm a member of the Tribe, I have to say that I'm in total love with all of my Terramar gear. It's yet to have let me down.

Anyway, so shortly after becoming a member of the "Tribe", I was sent two of the Men's Helix Mountain Tee Body-Sensors t-shirt, a long sleeve and a short sleeve. Having recently converted to being a trail runner, as opposed to a road runner (insert looney tune pic here), I can honestly say that both of these shirts have become my go-to shirts for training and racing alike. Not only are they functional, they are also rather stylish as I've had absolutely no problem wearing them out to town. They also serve their original function of being a base layer quite well.