Penn State Chics Dig Nerds

 Christmas Day, I convinced everyone to go on a short hike to the cliffs to test out our new sunglasses.

 Christmas Eve was beautiful, so we were able to hike Rocky Ridge. This time we took all of the Yoder family with us!

 This year, we made it a family event to participate in the SnowFest 5-miler trail race at Greenwood Furnace.  While Brady, Jesse, and I ran the trail race, my mom joined Amie and Natalee. The plan was for Mom to walk/run with Amie while Natalee walked with her friend Natalie.  Except that the competitiveness in Amie had her run more than we thought she would and she left Gram!   The competitive part of Brady ran this race much faster than he practices it.  Brady came in 2nd place, running it in 47:26.  Normally, he gains on us going up the switchbacks.  However, we are typically able to fairly easily catch up to him going across the top and heading down the rocks and wagon road.  The last part of the race comes down the old Belleville wagon road for about a mile.  This time, we couldn't even see Brady after the switchbacks!  He took off! We didn't finish far behind-- 5th overall(49:49) and 6th overall and 1st female (50.00) On this...

 "We did a thing."  What did we do?  Brady, Jesse, and I ran a 25K race at Hyner View State Park/Sproul State Forest.  Brady really wanted to enter a 25K, so Jesse and I decided to do it with him. And, we definitely did not pick an easy 25K race.  In fact, we picked one of the hardest ones with one of the most elevation gains per mile. This race included over 3000 feet of elevation gain in the 15 miles.  Twice we went to the top of the ridge and nearly returned to the Susquehanna River. This ended up being an awesome picture.  We were really close to Hyner View at this point. We were introduced to this race because of the children running in the Little Loggers Race two times.  The View 25K is organized by the same group and it begins at the same location. The weekend of one of the races, we camped at Hyner Run State Park.  While there, we went to Hyner View State Park .  That time, we were hoping to see hang gliders take off on the ram...

This year, for our annual Christmas Eve hike, the weather was nice.  We chose a shorter/easier hike at Greenwood Furnace State Park so that Ty could walk along this year.  We all walked on the Chestnut Trail loop.         I think that this is a great picture:

Jesse and I had a great opportunity to celebrate our anniversary a little early, thanks to my mom.  My mom got the kids to and from school and their activities while we were away. One of our initial plans were to go skiing at Snowshoe, West Virginia.  However, nature rained and warmed up incredibly which made skiing a much less attractive option. Instead, we went to Pine Creek Gorge, AKA Pennsylvania Grand Canyon, to the 9.2 mile long Golden Eagle Trail.  We hiked up the ridge first. View from Raven's Horn We quickly descended to walk along Wolf Run. We went up a ridge again, to a few nice vistas on each side of the ridge. And, then we descended to our car as the path followed Bonnell Run.  There were many stream crossings, which made it interesting at times. Overnight, we stayed at historic Genetti Hotel in Williamsport.  It had an impressive list of people who stayed at the hotel, including Babe Ruth, Cy Young, Fred Waring, Eleanor Roosevelt, Milton Roosevelt,...

 A few weeks ago, we met Jesse after work for a hike.  We had hiked along the river the last time we were here, but we saw that the Mid State Trail crossed through here and headed up the ridge.  So, we decided to check it out. We knew it went up the ridge.  But, apparently whoever made this trail didn't like switchbacks.  It went straight up the ridge.  It was definitely a thigh burning workout!  I think the way down was even more difficult. Brady hiked without arms for most of the hike, despite the difficult terrain. I'm really not sure. Near the top of the ridge, we paused near the green moss "carpet" trail for a photo opportunity. When we returned to the bottom, we started counting the train cars across the river.  This train was traveling really slowly.  We counted 5 engines and at least 200 cars.  It was massive.