We woke up today and decided we were going to stick around the neighborhood… But we still wanted to make it interesting. We decided to go up robins mountain… Which is literally in our backyard. We used to go up there a lot when we first moved here… There was a great Airplane Beacon tower up there. In fact… The Grange group that used to meet in our school in the 1950s and 60s was called “the beacon light Grange” in honor of the light up on that tower. Diane and I would go up inland climb the tower And it’s a joy the beautiful view of our valley. One time we even camped at the tower and came down and drove into work.… That was a long time ago. Now the tower”

Has been replaced with cell phone towers. There’s a lot of equipment up there and a lot of warnings about not getting too close so you don’t fry your brain.…

We still wanted to hike up there… And ‘Kyle had never seen it. So we drove to the Robin’s Mountain parking lot which was right past the fishing game gun club.

The trail was no longer in use because the fish and game folks had posted some signs that basically said… Yes this is a trail but it’s right behind our shooting range so proceed with care… Not very inviting We bushwhacked through the woods to get around the fishing game club and eventually found that much improved trail up to the top of the mountain

We are actually some Serbian guys up there working on the tower… I don’t think they expected to have visitors. But they were very nice

We walk through the woods to try to get a look at the view that used to be there over our valley… But in the 20 years the trees at all grown up too far.… ‘Kyle claimed one of the trees and was able to see some stuff

We then circle back around the other way. ‘Diane and I wanted to see if we could find the old Long Trail route. The trail used to go right over the top of this mountain and come down pretty much in our backyard.… Again that’s more than 20 years ago… But we were persistent. We stopped at a beautiful look at Rock and called my good friend Dave Hathaway who had a copy of the old trail map. He texted it to us and using that we were able to try following the old trail. It had been completely erased… The Blazes had even been removed… But with Persistence and some luck we were actually able to find some of the trail markings and even some old graffiti. It felt like archaeology.

There was lots of bear scratch activity up there too. We know there’s plenty of bears up here

We then hike down the steep road… And then bushwhacked again to avoid the fish and game club. We didn’t fancy jumping out into a field full of people with guns

It was quite an adventurous hike… Certainly the most adventurous hike we could take within one and a half miles of our house.…

I love where we live.

Nite all, nite sam

-me