Week in the Poconos

Took a vacation for a week with four other families in the Poconos. 10 adults and 10 children, how the chaos remained confined I will never know.

One of the first things to do was to look for trails in the state park across the street. Most of the "bike" paths were either old paved roads or gravel trails that were as good as paved. I was disappointed until we took the hiker trail back since we were late. Now I think the hiker trail is not to restrict bikes, but more of a bikes can't do this path. Needless to say it was a wonderful 5 mile rocky trail that make the watershed boring. About 80-90% was ridable and was about as challenging as it gets. Interesting thing about it was there was no real elevation change to talk about. I went back and the entire trail back and forth two days later. Boy I wish I had something like this close by.

Our first big group thing we did was to go to was to go to Bushkill Falls which has 7 or 8 waterfalls and plenty of hiking. We did most of the trails even with the little ones who did great. It was nice, but a little too civilized with steps and bridges almost everywhere. Felt more like an Ewok city than hiking in the wild.

After the hike and lunch the kids went to the playground before heading back and Nick split his head wide open... too much excitement for the little guy. I was worried at first that we were off to the emergency room for stitches but it stopped bleeding and we used some butterfly bandages to put him back together. He's a tough guy and didn't even cry that much after the first minute or two.


The next day we went on a hike at the park across the street with just the family. We needed the kids to have a day off and a good nap day. What was interesting is about 100 yards from the parking lot a black bear crosses the trail, stops and looks at us and continues on. I thought it was really cool, I like seeing animals like that in the "wild". Had to convince the wife that the bear was not waiting at the top of the hill to take Nick off as lunch... :)

The last big thing we did was the Leigh Valley bike trail. Its billed as a one-way downhill easy path which it was. I screwed up and couldn't get the trailer hooked to my bike but luckily one of the other couples wheeled our children down the trail. Wife was sick so she didn't have the energy to do it herself. It was a fun ride even if a little boring. Ended up doing the 13 miles in 2 1/2 hours which isn't bad considering that 3 of the kids were riding their bikes. Saw a rattle snake on the trail also... One of the other guys and myself biked back to get the car instead of driving around again. The gearing on the SS really wasn't ideal and 14mph is about all I could muster. Took an hour to get back.



All in all a pretty good vacation...