Day 348: Yesterday, I was entertaining all sorts of ideas about where to go for an end-of-season hike, but when I woke up this morning, the inspiration had fled. It wasn't that I didn't feel up to the miles; no, it was that I didn't want to drive to get there. Consequently, Pack Forest won out on two counts: proximity, and offering multiple options in case I felt like going farther than planned. I decided to make the hike do double-duty, and packed my GPS and field notebook so I could record invasive plants.
When I reached the halfway point in my original plan, I wasn't nearly ready to go home. As I was coming off Hugo Peak, I ran into some Park friends who suggested going out the 2130 Loop, a route which I thought was closed to all traffic, vehicular or pedestrian. "No, it's fine. They don't mean hiking," I was told, so off I went, game to add another 4 miles onto the day. I have to admit I was a little foot-weary when I got back to the car after a total of 14 miles, about half of which was spent on hard-packed road gravel and half on "softer" trail. Unfortunately, I didn't find any chanterelles for dinner, but I will be writing my invasives report from now until bedtime. Common tansy, tansy ragwort and foxglove abound.
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