The Walking Boss

It is the end of the month, and I'm out of fun money. That left me with the choice of trying to find a local hike (that creature does not exist) or trudge on the treadmill. To top things off, a snow storm blew in this morning, dropping snow, sleet and rain all over the place. Hemingway once wrote about taking an extended ski trip through the Alps. Ski into a little town, stop at the local bar, then ski on to the next town. It as always sounded fun to me, but: I don't ski, and I really don't drink that much anymore. So, a hike between coffee houses sounded fun to me. Of course, I don't drink coffee either. Just the same, I loaded up my dslr and Colin Fletcher's The Complete Walker into my daypack and headed off to Java City on the north side of Abilene. While it would occur to me later that Ernesto was a crazy old fucker that shot himself in the head, at this point I was looking forward to my adventure. When I went into Java City to buy a tea and ask permission to l

I took my friend, Cisco, up to Caprock Canyon State Park, and we did the upper Canyon Trail, about 7.5 miles. Unfortunatly, the blog has a size limit on photos, so all the photos are clickable to see a larger view. Every hike this month happened under overcast skies. I'm about ready to see some blue. Cisco at the first backcountry campsite. The south prong of the Little Red River. During the entire hike it had water in it. At the upper end of the South Prong the trail climbs 600 steep feet, and the hiker leaves the Rolling Plains and climbs onto the Llano Estacado. During the climb one must traverse fairly narrow ledges, and scramble nearly straight up. The view is worth it. And of course Mickey made the trip. He (and I) have hiked over 25 miles this month. Fern Cave, which is at the upper reaches of the North prong. It is a very cool little cave/overhang covered in ferns with constantly dripping water. We stopped for lunch here. Mule deer buck we saw in the North Prong Even tho

I drove 180 miles to visit Caprock Canyon State Park to hike some steep trails and find some geocaches. Did you ever see Nation Lampoon's Summer vacation? It is where Chevy Chase and the Family Griswald drive across the country, with a bunch of antics, to visit a huge theme park. When they get there, the park is closed. Yeah. Closed. Just like Caprock Canyon was closed for a public hunt today. Thankfully the 64 mile Caprock Canyon Trailway was open. The Trailway is a Rails to Trails program, where old railroad track was removed to make bike/hike/horse trails. They usually make for better riding than walking, as that it is fairly level, very smooth. I decided to park at the Monk's Crossing Depot and hike in the 4.7 miles to see Clarity Tunnel. The surrounding hills play funny tricks, with just a tiny bit of imagination one can almost hear a train coming when walking through the tunnel or walking across one of the many bridges. Of course the Mouse bottle went for the walk As of

At the beginning of this entire "get out more" obsession of mine I quickly relearned that I live in the middle of no where, at least as for as public places to hike. So, I started exploring things within a day's drive of home. Mineral Wells State Park is only two hours east of me, so it was an easy start. I had to be back in Abilene fairly early, so I had to press hard to get out to the park and get back. I managed to get eight miles, so it was okay. There were a ton of deer, quite a few turkey, opossums, and Coyotes. I actually saw most of the deer up by the drive up campground. I really wish people would stop feeding the animals at parks. It was cool and overcast for the entire day, 35F at the trailhead. A friend of mine just got back from taking his family to Disney World and brought me this back. I told him I'd take it with me today, and here it is. Let's see how many miles Mickey and I can log this coming year. I took this as a before (or I guess, "