Weekly Round Up: Feeling Fall

 

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  In this week's edition I've got food stuff, I'll tell you the very surprising turn that my reading took this week, and all about my weekend hiking bender.

Eats

Let's start with a "so simple it's stupid" five minute recipe.

I've been hearing about Trader Joe's toasted sesame dressing for years, and finally picked up a bottle.  That was step 1, and step 2 was to figure out what to do with it.  

On Monday the fellas had leftovers, and I was free to make whatever I wanted for dinner.  As usual when I get a last minute "whatever I want" for dinner option, I wasn't feeling a trip to the grocery store, so I turned to what I hand in the house.

One serving of soba noodles that had been in the pantry for a while, some frozen Costco stir fry veggies, some frozen fried tofu, a healthy dash of the dressing, and a topping of cashews.

10/10 highly recommend.

Next up: Julie wrote about making pumpkin muffins, and I knew I had to have some.  I wasn't sure if the boys would eat them or not, so I only made half the recipe.  Presumably my muffin tins are smaller than the recipe was written for, so half of a recipe for a dozen muffins netted me nine muffins.  So far I've eaten two and Doggo ate one in a counter surfing raid.  She's getting better about not counter surfing when we're watching, but I'm still naive about how long Long Dog can stretch when my back is turned and there are goodies on the table.  She rated both the muffin and the wrapper as a 10/10 and had no ill effects from her treat.  She was so smooth that if she'd just eaten the muffin a little faster I would have been none the wiser about the theft.

And last but not least, how about another stir fry?  I'm on Rainbow Plant Life's email list, and as soon as she sent out a link for a stir fry, I knew I was going to make it ASAP.  The only reason that I don't make more of her recipes is that a lot of them fall on the complicated side, but this was an easy, straightforward one with a huge payoff in taste.

My changes were: I air fried the tofu instead of frying it, used bok choy and a red pepper for the veggies, I thickened the sauce with corn starch, and I served it over rice noodles.  It was another 10/10 highly recommend.

Workouts

The usual boring stuff during the week - the 12/30/3 workout one day, a two minute run-walk the next.  I'm back to mostly running for the run/walks.

This weekend tho!  I went on a hiking binge.  Hold that thought and I'll circle back in a minute.

Watching

Not much to report.

Reading

Nothing!!!  I haven't found my next book yet, so I'm spending more time on the internets and doing lots of crossword puzzles in the NYT app (my standard time wasting pastime).

Enough chit chat, I came here to see puppy pictures

Happy to help with that.  Here's the girl!

Hubs thinks that it is hysterical that she uses the cushion as a body pillow, and I think that it is genius.  Also shoutout to her latest toy - the Kong Wubba!  It's the best $9.99 that I've spent recently.  She's gave it a lot of play this week and it is still intact.

Hikeapalooza 2024

This weekend the forecast was bright and sunny, but just a little chilly for biking.  The Hubs had his heart set on spending Saturday at home, and I had my heart set on being outside.

I've been hearing a lot of chatter about Mohican State Park, and I decided to see what the hype was about.  I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do there but the internets said there was a fire tower and hiking, so I took the chance that it would be worth the drive.  For context, it's in "the middle of nowhere" very close to Malabar Farm.

I set my GPS for the fire tower and headed out into the country.  In case you're not familiar, fire towers were built to keep an eye out for fires in rural areas.  Today they are still used, just to a lesser extent.  Mohican's tower is 80 feet high, and it is no longer in service.  You can't go into the observation deck, but you can climb the stairs.  As you can see from the parking lot, it's pretty popular.

I climbed up and confirmed that the gorgeous views on the ground were even more gorgeous from up high.  Hey, all of the lighthouses are closed for the season, and fire towers are the next best thing.

The fire tower was very nice, but what could I get up to next?  I'd seen some signs for a covered bridge, so I made that my next stop.

The covered bridge took me to the trail for Lyons Falls, which ended up being a somewhat easy 3 mile hike with gorgeous views.

Afterwards I felt like I could squeeze in one more thing before I left the park, so I went to the gorge, which had the most gorgeous views yet (see pic at top of post).  The signs said there was a hike that was two miles, which felt like that "one more thing" I was looking for.  At the start of the trail there was a sign saying that the trail was strenuous.  I raised an eyebrow but didn't think much of the warning.

The trail started on a downhill...A LOT of downhill.  I knew that what went down would be coming back up, but like I said, it was sheer gorgeousness and I'd done a lot of uphill and downhill in the mud last spring and this was dry ground.

Midway through the hike there was a connection to another trail via a suspension bridge.  Since it wasn't on the route I didn't *have* to cross it, but of course I did.  It was very wobbly, and very fun.

Now it was time for the uphill part.  The trail seemed less well constructed, and there was a steep uphill with only some large tree roots to grab onto.  A few folks were coming down while clinging to the roots, and when they got to the bottom we joked about the steep drop and whether it was better to be going uphill or downhill at that point.  As we parted the man said "just wait until you get to the ladder".

Sure enough after a good bit more uphill, there was a ladder.  It was a "you had to be there" kind of thing, but to appreciate the scale when I got there two children and one adult were in the process of climbing down.

As hard as the climb was, this may be my favorite hike ever.  I do feel that the way that I did the route, which was to turn left facing the gorge is the "easy" way to do it since it has the "easier" downhill - all that you have to do is walk down the trail instead of going down a ladder and climbing down the tree roots.

(Want to see a better picture of the ladder and get the perspective of someone who did the trail in the opposite direction?  You can find that here!)

On Sunday the Hubs was game to leave the house, and he wanted to start training up for next month's Boy Scout camp.  My legs were very sore from the day before, but I wanted to get in some more of the gorgeous leaf peeps, and also we wanted an activity that we could do with Doggo.  Yep, all of these things could happen at once and we headed out for a local trail.  For the first half mile someone in our group wanted to sniff everything and then double back to sniff everything again, but she soon got the hang of it and became the most enthusiastic member of our group.  It is very hard to tire out a puppy (ask me how I know) but this seemed to do the trick and she spent the rest of the day napping.

I don't know what the weather will be like next weekend, but if it's anything on par with this, you can bet that I will be out on the trails.  I didn't realize how much I have been missing the trails since I finished the hiking challenge last spring.  And also everyone is nuts about the national parks, and I'm sure that the hype is warranted, but just sayin' that the state parks that I've been to are worth a shout out as well.

See you next week!  Have you gotten in any great hikes recently?