A Few Fall Hikes

We're currently in what Matt calls the "elbow season." We don't consider this fall any longer because all the leaves are off the trees, but it's not quite winter yet either. Vermont in November is a lot like Wyoming was, muddy. That hasn't stopped us from getting outside to explore - at least when it's not raining!

Here are some pics from a few hikes we've done recently...one was just Mt. Philo around sunset (I was playing with my iphone camera), another was down near Middlebury to a place called Abbey Pond, and then this weekend we hiked up to the Stowe Pinnacle. Here you go...

Mt. Philo - you can tell these are from a few weeks ago - the leaves still looked beautiful!







Hi Will!



Abbey Pond - We had a nice day for this hike up to a small mountain pond. The leaves are actually looking really pretty here too!

We saw this little guy on our way in. Glad we didn't come across him on the trail - Willow was terrified from the car and we all know how dog vs. porcupine would turn out!



Somebody told us that it's hunting season (we obviously had little clue on how that would affect us) and it's really important to wear orange while hiking. So we bought some - we all chose to sport our orange in different ways.





We hiked beside this beautiful stream all the way up!





I didn't take any at the top (oops) but here are a few others from the way up.









We stayed at the lake house after this hike so I included this one just because I think it's pretty :)



On to "elbow season." Today we hiked what's called the Stowe Pinnacle, a small peak that's a little lower in elevation (so we didn't run into all the snow up top again) with great views.

The trail was very well maintained and we saw some fun stuff along the way.





We saw some cool surface hoar frost on the way up. If you haven't seen hoar frost before, it's really crazy looking! I have only seen it form on top of snow, but on this hike it had formed on top of the frozen ground. Don't mind the mud in the picture :) As I said, it's muddy around here these days.



I couldn't help but think that it reminds me of pulled sugar candy.

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/jYfTN52Wo8QW4tUG8M7iJw

There was no snow on the ground, but the trees were frosty!

Finally, some views from the top.













Hope you had a great weekend! I'm sure we'll spend this week trying to adjust to sunset coming at 4:30pm - at least we don't live in northern Russia where it's dark continuously from November until February - yikes!