This weekend we loaded up our gear and headed down to Shawnee National Forest. After our recent foray at Red River Gorge we reevaluated our packing procedures and shed a lot of unnecessary gear lightening up our packs quite a bit. How quickly things change in 6 weeks!

Red River Gorge: Stress, prep, stress, plan, stress, pack.
Shawnee National Forest: We don’t need this, I think we have enough food, ok I’m ready!

We arrived at the park and headed over to the Garden of the Gods. Since this was a popular area we had to maneuver around other people which was tedious at times. The Beard kept saying, this is why we don’t hike with the public….

So prepare yourself for an onslaught of pictures, or if you’re too lazy to physically scroll through each one, zoom down to the bottom and watch our video montage!

And of course, we had to get some cool shots while we were here….

After our fun on the cliffs we headed deeper into the woods.

It sure was beautiful! I also captured a shot of The Beard capturing a shot of nature. Shot inception!

The forest was beautiful but for those thinking of heading out there yourselves, be warned their maps are the worst we’ve seen. Very haphazard and based on our calculations, the mileage wasn’t correct either. At one point we were stuck on a trail The Beard referred to as “Hell” because we were wading through mud and tons and tons of spiders! We decided we were NOT going back that way and ended up taking the road through the country side much to the dismay of a large herd of cows.

However, in our typical fashion we made it to the car right as nightfall hit.We survived our hike and got in 13.67 miles! As always, I love spending time together, even if it involves spiders, mud and a few more miles than anticipated!