hiking

Most of our every-weekend hikes were local to our home in Roanoke, Virginia, and repeats of ones we’ve done many times, but there were a few new things along the way.

You look at seven months of hikes to close the 19th year of Gail and me walking every weekend and you start to see some patterns, most striking of which is the hikes are creeping toward shorter.

One highlight of the walks of the first five months of the year was a semi-surprise for The Day Hiker when, upon our arrival at the base of the Star Trail up Roanoke Mountain, pretty much the whole dang family (all but the Raleigh family) was there.

Our fall hikes included lots of old favorites, a few urban walks and three great family hikes, with grandkids as young as 5 along for hikes of nearly eight miles total—in the cold!