Miles 47 through 57, Rimrock Trail, Kinzua Reservoir

Today was an amazing walk.  After my conversation yesterday with my brother-and-sister-in-law, Billy and Heather, who are avid hikers, we were able to plan a hike in the region of the Kinzua Reservoir.  The hike that we planned was a 5.8 mile loop referred to in the map below as the Morrison Trail Loop. Heather went with me, and we met to leave at 1 pm so that we could drive to the Kinzua Dam.  The trailhead was just a bit beyond the Kinzua Dam.  I was really thrilled to be hiking rather than walking along a road.

 

A blogger's post about this area.

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Link:   USDA.GOV entry about this area (and this is where the map above came from).

Somehow, though, we missed the point where we should have turned on that Morrison Trail to finish out that loop.  We ended up going beyond that point which put us on a much longer loop.  Yep, we ended up on the Rimrock Trail Loop.  Frankly, I'm glad.  The Morrison Trail would not have taken us right up to the reservoir, and that was just a grand sight to see as always, so I'm glad we got to go there.  We figure, as we translate the map, that we hiked 11 miles!  The whole hike took us a little over 5 hours.  We did get really tired, and we weren't prepared for such a long walk!  For example, we didn't have but 2 bottles of water each, and the only thing we had to eat as a bag of pretzels that Heather had brought.

 See, we wanted to do the Morrison Trail Loop, but we ended up doing both.

That' me.  Pushing a boulder one-handed while eating an apple?  Superman can do that, but not me.

Beautiful, dense forest.

My sister-in-law, Heather Marie.

A pretty pool of water.

There it is again, I always have to have my scene of a wooded stream.

I took this picture from the Morrison Campground which is right on the Reservoir.  People can hike to it or boat to it; you can't drive to it.  I've camped at one of these campgrounds before, but to come with my family is now on my bucket list.  It is so beautiful here.

One of the campsites.

Now HOW did this tree come to grow like this?  I would really like to know.

We ran across very few people on this hike.  We set up a timer on the camera on my phone to take this picture.

Seeing nothing but this around you as far as the eye can see can make you feel really small and just a little lost!

Naturally growing blueberries!  Yes, thanks, I'll have some!

Now, in this video, Heather and I had come across a mother deer who was standing very close to us.  She knew we were there but didn't take off.  She has a baby, too, but the baby had run off.  After I took this video, Heather and I went and sat quietly on a log for a while so we could give the baby a chance to come back, and he did.  It was really cute to see him come back to follow his mother.  We gave them a chance to wander off, and then we resumed our hike.

We persevered, though, knowing that we weren't lost (as were still following trail markers) and knowing that we would come out somewhere eventually!  As I mentioned in a previous post where God provided me with an opportunity to walk double, I just feel that we were meant to take this lovely, long walk together and come out feeling very victorious with our 11 miles!  We had fabulous conversations, getting to know each other as sisters and friends.

Total steps today: 26,811 <------That's a personal record since I started doing this.