The wife and I are lucky enough to have a well-kept State Park just five miles from our house. The weather was great on Sunday, so we decided to hike some trails at Paris Mountain.
Paris mountain has a swimming lake, campgrounds, and lots of biking/hiking trails. It was our second time to the park, but our first time to really get out and hike. We decided to hike the Sulpher Springs Trail. It’s mostly a mountain biking trail, but a third of it is hiking-only. When we started walking, we noticed that almost everyone was going in the opposite direction. We shrugged it off and kept on trekking.
When we got to the mountain lake and dam, the place was crawling with kids. There’s a parking lot and picnic area nearby and lots of people seemed to be forcing their children outside to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather. We crossed the road and started hiking back up the mountain to where we had parked. It was then that we realized why almost no one had been going in our direction. The path was almost straight up. The first three-quarters of the trail had been so mild that we questioned why it had a difficulty rating of 8/10. Now we knew why. The last quarter of the hike really gassed us. I had to stop twice to catch my breath and shed a few layers of clothing. We learned a lesson we’ll not soon forget; go with the traffic.
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