Hiking and Waterfalls...

Temperatures have been pretty steady for almost the past week at 90 degrees or higher. So what better way to spend a day off than hiking in the cool mountains. We headed up north for Ricketts Glen State Park and hiked a trail called the Falls Trail. This route takes you past 21 of the 22 waterfalls in the park. It's a pretty steep and sometimes slippery trek, but is definitely well worth the sweat. We, of course, had our camera along and as you probably guessed ended up taking around 150 pictures. The coolness of the mountains and dampness from the falls along with huge trees and moss covered rocks, made it a perfect spot for inspiring new ideas. The waterfalls varied in height from 11 feet to the largest being 94 feet in height. For some reason, we tended to like the smaller ones the best. Here's some views of one of our favorite waterfall, Murray Reynolds, which measures in at 16 feet.




At the base of the fall, the water was incredibly deep and beautiful. Wouldn't it be a perfect spot for swimming?





Here's a shot of me standing on the top of the waterfall, which is something that you really couldn't safely do on a lot of the other ones. This waterfall sort of wrapped around and sent the water flowing down along the side of the rock. Obviously you need to really be careful about watching your step where the rock gets slippery.

Here's some other pictures from our hike:






A few areas throughout the trail had these stone steps that you had to climb up. They looked really nice against the lush green scenery.






We ended up spending 4 hours or so on the trail. It was very relaxing. Our lunch consisted of the season's first tomatos which we made into bruschetta. Who doesn't love the taste of the first tomatos of the year?




As a result of this wonderful nature outing, I made four new clutches today with forest scenes. Two of them were inspired from a combination of our trip to Ricketts Glen and our honeymoon to Acadia National Park. Here's a sneak peek:




Also, check the shop later today for a completely brand new product design. It will be the first in a hopefully continued series.