We get packed up and have breakfast before being ready to leave at 7:30. Ladybug is still getting ready and she can't believe that "sleeping in" for us means up and ready this early.
The morning is cool, with temperatures in the low 60's There is a 40-percent chance of rain in the forecast, but it isn't raining when we leave. A short time later the rain starts, but it's hitting the upper canopy and not making it to the lower woods. Kelly stops to put on her pack rain cover, but I decide that I'm not stopping until it starts pouring.
Fortunately for me, the sprinkle stops almost as quickly as it started. The trail surface Is really nice here. We do have some big rocks to go up and around, but the trail is mostly soft dirt covered with leaves and some jutting roots and rocks, but nothing unmanageable.
The first six miles pass without fanfare. We stop at a really beautiful, large stream to filter water before crossing over a bridge and going up the next ridge, before skirting around a gorgeous lake called Nuclear Lake.
The lake was the site of a company called United Nuclear Corporation that used uranium and plutonium in research, and in the 70s an accident released plutonium dust in the area. The water has been tested and to be found free of contamination, however I think I will take only pictures and get my drinking water from elsewhere!
The trail goes up along the ridge 500 feet above the valley, and three miles later we come to an overlook. The view below is across a valley with pasture lands and well kept barns, and in the distance a community of massive white homes around a lake.
Leaving the viewpoint, the trail passes through an area choked thick with wild roses on both sides of the trail. The smell of the roses is ambrosia.
We descend past the Telephone Pioneers Shelter (and I am wondering where the AMC gets these names!), but we don't stop because we are on a mission for food. A Malaysian food truck is parked at the next road crossing, just another mile and a big descent down the hill. On the way down the hill, we walk by a massive oak tree. I can't believe the size of this beauty, and the pictures do not do it justice!
We make the descent and walk on a boardwalk through a marsh of cattails and elderberry toward a road. Baby watersnakes are curled up on the boardwalk, soaking up the sun.
We leave the marsh and step onto the shoulder of the road. A a sign reading "Malaysian Food Truck" points to the left, and 150 yards later we are standing at a pull off and ordering lunch!