Summa-summa time. Part II.

Along with one trip to Gunpowder Falls, I made it up to Patapsco Valley State Park a few times this summer, dragging along whatever friends or siblings were willing to accompany me. (I guess, more accurately, a friend who was preparing for a family hiking trip to Yellowstone invited me along, and then we kept going, bringing along whoever else was interested.)

We kept up the theme of getting terribly, horribly, hopelessly lost two or three of those times. One of the days, we planned to do the five mile loop and estimated it would take about two hours, then spent five hours wandering, before a mountain biker sent from heaven shared his water with us and pointed us back in the same direction we'd just come from in order to make it back to the car. The other times we stayed in the same area and just never quite made it to where we wanted to be, with no idea of where we actually were.

My last trip, I went up with a friend before he headed back to school and we wandered around a bit, then got soaked in an incredible downpour on the way back. Then there was that one time I was viciously attacked by a wasp and had to resort to the removal of clothing in order to get it off me.

All in all though, the park is full of fun memories- bounding up hills and exploring the train tracks and picking wild raspberries and stopping to do yoga and take pictures when we couldn't figure out which way to go.

Not to mention, it's beautiful! Check it:

 

If you look closely, you can see the deer on the train tracks. There was a family of them that we saw a couple of times. 

I was so excited to have my little brother back. He came along and was the official raspberry picker. 

This is the vicious wasp that attacked me, after I'd thrown it into the water. Not long after this photo, the other bugs you see attacked it. What goes around, comes around, sucker.

One day, as we were leaving, we turned the wrong way on Ritchie Highway and ended up in Baltimore. Lucky for us, it just so happened to be July 11th, so we hit up every 7-11 between Arnold and Baltimore. These aren't even all of our cups. No regrets. 

I admit, I'm a bit of a poser sometimes. These tunnels are all over the park and if I ever have to pick a place to park my homeless rear end (as a soon-to-be-graduated Anthropology major, that seems to be a growing possibility), this is it. 

Hopefully, I'll get my summer postings done before I graduate (IN SIXTY DAYS), so I can write about other things without feeling guilty for not being somewhat up to date.