hiking: storm king

Last weekend, Matt & I took a mini-mini break and stayed up in the Hudson Valley for one night. Saturday morning, we woke up bright and early to do a hike up Storm King! We haven't done any hiking lately - even though there's a ton of it near us! We even have a book called "60 Hikes within 60 Miles of NYC" or something like that. So we decided we should take advantage. Well...this is the first one we've done. It's also the first time we've ever been to the Hudson Valley, other than taking the train through it. And I definitely want to do both again!





The trail started off fairly vertically, with a bunch of "rock scrambles", and all of a sudden we were far above where we parked the car! It reminded us of hiking in the Columbia Gorge, because almost every hike started with a steep climb at the beginning. This hike was mostly a bunch of climbing for the first half hour and then it leveled off a bit.



The views, though! I felt a little stupid, but I honestly didn't realize that there were actual mountains in New York State. And these mountains aren't anything compared to the Adirondacks!









The trail was nice and shady, so even though it was extremely hot (when has it not been?) it wasn't too bad. It helped that we started so early, though!









The view from the top was amazing! We only (briefly) had to share it with one other group. And there was a shady spot to sit and have a snack! The way down was almost harder than the way up, but it wasn't quite as steep on the second leg of the loop. It was a really nice hike, even if it did make me wish I had hiking boots with ankle support! I would love to come back when the leaves are changing and the weather is a bit cooler. We're already thinking of when we can go up again, even if it's a different hike (we have a whole list of them!). After we finished our hike, we ate lunch at a nearby diner and headed over to the other Storm King (the art center). More about that in another post!