Now that my friends are back from their cruise that I wasn't invited on (it's actually okay since they took a Princess line, which apparently is filled with old people. I'm going on a Carnival one with young people in July!) we took a second mountain biking trip before I head back to Philly tomorrow. We decided to try a new place and settled on a dinky state park close to our houses. Little did we know, that dinky state park would whoop our asses.
Last time we went mountain biking we went to a large state park, with a few beautiful lakes, and lots of foot traffic. A well known state park, the place was well maintained with lots of people around. The biking was really scenic, the we'd got up huge hills to reach some opening in the trees which led to some view of the landscape or of the lakes. It was great.
This time, it was legit mountain biking. The hills only led to, well, more hills. We got really intune with nature as throughout our entire trip we saw nobody but ourselves. The trails were sometimes crazy, really bordering on more of a hiking trail, as there were so many (huge) rocks we were afraid we'd break all of our bones down some of those really steep hills before making it back. Oh, and there were like no trail markers. Thank goodness for the iPhone and its GPS, because for most of the time we were just plain lost in the middle of the woods. There were no clearings, just trees, EVERYWHERE.
In the process of being lost we stumbled into some other reservation, which apparently wasn't public, with signs all over saying telling us not to trespass for fear of arrest. It was actually really creepy, because someone over there built stone walls all over, for no forseeable reason. And again, we were all alone. We even stumbled upon an envelope enclosed in a zip-lock bag which was hanging from a tree. We were pretty afraid that we stumbled across a drug deal and that we'd find money in the envelope, but luckily it was just a riddle... Uhhh, that's not sketch.
Anyway, we're glad to be alive and out of there. We spent a good 2 hours lost in the woods, and are pretty tired from walking half of it since the trails were treacherous. Aaaand, we want to go back there next chance we get!
EDIT: Shoot, I always forget something! So pretty early on, KRad, the most experienced mountain biker out of the three of us, was leading the way quite well. And then he came across our first really steep rocky hill. And then he went down it... tumbling literally head over heels with his bike. He was alright, but it was hilarious because he literally did a flip. Thank goodness for helmets!