Maryland has some stuff for hikers too...

Okay, I have to give some credit to our neighbors north of here. Yesterday we decided to head North to Maryland. We often pass through this area on the way to my parents house, and since we are either going or coming from there, we don't have a minute to spare to stop and look around, netherless hike. So we decided to see what was around that area (and maybe later this year take a weekend camp there). We both want to go camping, and almost did this weekend - but just were not able to. I hope that first weekend in April we'll have a chance to go somewhere!

Anyway, this will likely be a long post (and I finally posted the pictures from last week below this post, so check out the post below this one too!). I hope to have a knitting post later this week.

First stop on our trip was the Cunningham State Falls Park. I had seen a sign for falls (I am a total sucker for falls and caverns), and so I wanted to go. When we woke up and I checked out their website, we noticed they were having a special maple syrup demonstration/breakfast. So of course, that just made us want to go even more.

As a side note, when I think of Northern Maple Syrup... I admit I think of Vermont and Canada, not Maryland. But they sure know how to make a good pancake!

Here is a picture of a tree tapped the way the Native Americans used to do it... with a hollowed piece of Sumac...

Here is the new fangled way of doing things - with a maze of plastic tubing connected to a bunch of trees.

Here is the sap boiling away (apparently it needs to be boiled for at least 3 hours!)

Here is inside the pancake brunch. It was really super yummy and their sausage was out of this world. Their pancakes were rather fluffy - how do they do that? Mine never come out so pillow-y!
They had some local musicians playing away, and a nice roaring fire! It was chilly in the morning, but warmed up later.


After pancakes for lunch we hiked out to the falls (see those people on the rockface? that is how you can see how big the falls really were!)


After we hiked back tot he visitor center, we decided to go next door to the Catoctin Mountain National Park. A lot of the park was closed off this weekend, due to a certain visitor. As most people know Camp David is inside this park somewhere. They won't tell you where anymore, I guess there used to be signs.

We decided to hike in the parts close to the visitor center that were open, and we ended up hiking to Wolf Rock. It was labeled a "strenuous" trail, and after hiking awhile I could see why - it was steeply uphill 95% of the time.

But we made it, and climbed on the rock. Here are our "explorer" poses for you to enjoy.



Then after the hike downhill (much faster!) we decided just to stop off the road and take a look at the Catoctin Iron Furnace. We didn't see all of the furnace site since we had very limited time. We hope to explore it a bit more next time we're up there.

One of the furnaces:


Ruins of the IronMaster's Home:



Anyway - I hope you enjoyed a play by play of our Saturday! I know I enjoyed spending an entire day outdoors with my dear husband... and in the afternoon it even got up to 58 degrees in the sun!! I'm maintaining that spring is almost here...