This past weekend we had a fabulous time out and about in nature! We hiked on Saturday for about 3-4 hours and we explored an old military base for about 3 hours. It was a good active weekend and I it was the perfect way to get in exercise!
Browns Farm Trail: Catoctin Mountain National Park
We started on Saturday by driving up to the Catoctin
Mountain National Park. I had researched
a trail that I wanted to visit and an overlook that I had never been to (that I
remember). I was gung ho! As we wound up the mountain and into the
park property, I began to get a sinking pit in the bottom of my stomach. There were cars EVERYWHERE. Every little pull off had cars stacked up
every which way parked. It was insanity.
As we got closer to the park visitor center and the road that we would be
turning off on the amount of cars increased.
It was wall to wall people! We
turned onto the road that would take us to the parking lot at the trail head
that I had planned to hike. There were Park
Police out directing traffic! What the…….. Luckly it was just to control the mad amount of people that were visiting the park. And even more happily, I had no run in with the police during this visit like I did a previous visit!
We drove carefully and cautiously through the swarms of
people. I was hopeful that the parking
lot where we were heading would be a little less crowded. After all, it was a mile or two from the
visitor center. But no. It was jam packed! No thank you!
I like a little peace and quiet when I hike. I don’t want to be shoulder to shoulder in a
crowd! We drove on. The next parking lot was busy also! We were starting to think that we would have
to ditch our plans to hike at Catoctin.
But I started to notice that the further out we went, the less people. You see, there aren’t as many fabulous
overlooks further into the park and that deters a lot of people. Not us! We went to one of the furthest parking lots
and there was plenty of parking. We hit up some trails off of that parking lot
and we had a fabulous time! Now don’t get me wrong, there were still
people. But it was a manageable amount! I would estimate that we only see people once
every mile of our hike. Ahhhhhhhhhhh
nature at last!
We even had time to stop and explore an old grave yard after our hike!!!
Fort Ritchie
On Sunday we woke up and we just didn’t know what we were going to do. What to do? Where to go? I don’t know what sparked me to remember Fort Ritchie, but it came to my mind. I had always known about it and had always had some vague idea that this was a decommissioned army base and that there were a lot of empty buildings. But I knew nothing about it other than that. I mentioned it to Jason and he was all for it!
Boy were we surprised.
The county uses it as a park and there is a community center and a lake
on the property. The lake is man made
and was created in the late 1800’s by an ice company to cut ice and sell in
Baltimore and Washington DC. In the 1920’s
the property was developed into a training camp for the Maryland National Guard. In the 1940’s, during the war the control of
the property transferred to the U.S. Army where it became a military
intelligence Training Center. Fort Ritchie
closed it’s doors in 1998 and the future of the property has been questionable. In the meantime, it was a fabulous place to
walk around and explore!
