Winter Hike Series No. 1

The Hamilton County Parks hosts a “Winter Hike Series”, which is a series of five hikes, held on five consecutive Saturdays, at five of their parks.  I’ve volunteered to be a hike “sweep” for the series (that means I’m the caboose and I can’t let anyone fall behind me; they are very cautious to not lose anyone out there).  I hope that the weather will cooperate and I’ll actually make it out to all five.  The first hike was held at Winton Woods.

Side note – temps for the last two days have been in the negative digits.  If this arctic air sticks around, I will not be outside for hike number two!  Luckily this past Saturday was nice; temperature starting around 30 and warming up as the day went.  Meteorologists are forecasting next Saturday to be nice as well.  They say that the front we are under right now should move on and we will be back to normal by the end of the week (which means 30’s – still very chilly but at least it’s well above 0).

This is the shelter at Winton Woods Harbor.  You can see the early folks are busy setting up for our lunch.  At the end of each hike in the series, Hamilton County Parks treats the participants to a pot of homemade soup, cooked over an open fire.  Chicken noodle today!

Here is a group hiking along the river on the Kingfisher trail.  It was beautiful along this trail – the river was frozen solid and the trails were covered with snow.  Many parts of our walk were on the sidewalks in the park, which were covered with ice due to the sun melting the snow then the temps refreezing them.  That was no fun to walk on.  However, down here on the Kingfisher trail the trees blocked the sun so we had nice fluffy snow to stomp through.