Showing posts with label hiking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hiking. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Hike up Chick Hill

One of the Sabbaths in March while I was at home waiting for my passport, Jonathan went on a hike with some of the members of the Bangor church. Later he told me that it was a nice hike and he'd take me there sometime when I returned, so Saturday April 27 was the day. After lunch we headed out for 20-30 minutes east to Chick Hill.

Now, if any of you know me well, I'm not really much of a hiker. I enjoy a good nature walk, but when things start to get vertical, I start to chicken out. Then last year we lived in South Korea, a country that is about 70 percent mountainous. I put aside my dislike for climbing for the eight months we lived there in order to for us to fully experience the country. In a country with that many mountains, to experience it, you need to climb it. So, panting and sweating, I followed Jonathan up mountains, as we were both left in the dust by elderly Koreans who hike up mountains the size of the CN Tower several times a week (OK, maybe not that high, but probably close...those people are serious hikers!).

Now that we live in Maine, Jonathan seems to think that a day hike up Tumbledown Mountain (its very name does not inspire much confidence), Mt. Katadin, or Mt. Washington would be perfectly normal. And here I am, still recovering from some of our climbs last spring... But Chick Hill, surprisingly, was a perfect length of hike for me. I fully enjoyed the hike, once I knew we weren't starting out on a repeat of our hike up to a cave on the side of a cliff in Seoraksan National Park last April. Here's some pictures I snapped throughout our hike. Most of them are from the top of the hill, where we basked in the warm sunshine before heading back down.

Dandelion-esque flowers along the trail
Not sure what kind of flower they are, but they are bright and cheery
There was a large bird soaring overhead when we reached the top, but this is the only shot I could capture of him
Looking out toward the ocean. Apparently the mountains in the distance are in Acadia National Park.
My man :)
Tiny fungi on the rocks
Looking south
A small stream beside the trail (it looked prettier than this, but that didn't translate to my camera)
Chick Hill from below
One more last-ditch effort to snap a picture of the large bird (on the right near the tree). It didn't work...
Pretty lake on the drive home