Trail Running Haw Ridge Park

We had a lazy weekend, no big trips, not much on the agenda, the kids mostly just wanted to play outside with the neighbors. In other words, a perfect time for me to find a little time to go for a longish trail run. I have been wanting to run the trails at Haw Ridge for a while. Over the summer, the kids and I did a little hike in the park, but we only scratched the suface. It is one of the areas largest municipal parks and has a great network of trails, so it's really a surprise that I hadn't adventured in there much yet.

This morning was our first frost of the year, with temps dropping into the 30's overnight. So I wore long underwear tops and bottoms and a headband to keep my ears warm. I had loaded up my GPSr with all the parks caches, including a few offset multis. There was still a dense fog as I drove over to the parking area, where I was the first car to arrive. It was cold, and for the first 5 minutes I was having doubts about whether I'd be able to do the run I had in mind. Foolish thoughts, I was soon plenty warm, pumping my legs up hilly trails and to my first cache find. There was a small herd of 8 or so deer near the cache, and I watched them prance away down the slope before walking to GZ and finding a nice old ammo can. The caches in this park are all ammo cans, and they are all old by geocaching standards, having been placed in 2002. This is actually a pretty neat thing, to have so many old caches in one place, and all in good shape, at least in my experience. I often feelt that this is the what geocaching used to be about, finding treasures out in the woods. Geocaching has morphed into something much much more it seems, with so many roadside finds, and containers that have little to nothing in them. And a lot of the older caches have been stolen, or downgraded over the years.

As I continued running (and walking up some of the steeper hills), I got happier and happier. The fall colors were just coming in, and a nice blanket of fallen leaves crunched underfoot as I trotted along the paths. The trails were not designed tog et you places, but more to get you moving, so they twisted and double-backed, sometimes almost looping back to where they started. They hugged the shoreline, where 8 inch fish were deadly still inches beneath the glassy surface. The sun was starting to warm the air, and eventually my misty breath disappeared and I continued thumping down the trails. By the end of my run, I had found all the remaining caches in the park I hadn't previously found, and logged 7 miles. Silly, but I wonder if not having more caches to find in the park will make me less inclined to revisit it? There are a lot more trails to explore, and many more nice runs. I would be a fool not to come back for another jog