My original plan, as I began to decide how to end my year, was to have one final hike on the weekend of New Years with my best friend and his husband, funnily enough, making for 50 Hikes in Michigan– although I deviated from the book itself- and 2 outside of it (West Virginia and Maryland), but that didn’t end up happening. When my final hikes got tossed up, my best friend and his partner took the reins though, and I’m forever grateful to them for that.
On December 28, I headed toward Frederick, Maryland to end the year with someone I haven’t gotten to spend nearly enough time with in recent years (I’m death glaring you COVID). He had set up a slew of activities that included a lot of the outdoors, plenty of good food, and a healthy amount of football, so I knew I was set.
My first full day, we headed out to Gettysburg, which I’ll likely cover in a different post, and the fun just continued from there.
51 of 52
Harper’s Ferry
Day 2 included Harper’s Ferry, on both the West Virginia and Maryland sides of the Appalachian Trail and trekking through the town itself and parts of the C&O Canal Pathway. We even did some rock jumping, responsibly, in the Potomac, and the boys kept me on my toes with their extremely long legs. The trek was punctuated on both sides with some great coffee and we spent a majority of our time out and about the town talking about politics and our reasons behind why we like certain portions of American History.
While it was cool to see John Brown’s Fort and to glimpse multiple moving trains from so close, being able to chat about such things freely with such great people probably marked this as one of my favorite hikes this year. I think this particular trek really hit home that, like my best friend, his spouse is also someone I can have thoughtful conversations with, even if we don’t have similar views on things, and that none of us are afraid to state when we don’t have enough information about something to have an opinion.
52 of 52
Monocacy River Trail
Finally, on January 1, 2022, I finished my challenge. We decided it counted because Hike 1 of my 2021 challenge was on January 2, 2021 and the challenge is about personal goal reaching, not really anything beyond that. The boys were also adamant about completing it with me, because they wanted to share in the celebration of completing a long-term goal of mine. We headed out to just around their house to a trail they frequent often. Starting at a soccer pitch, we followed the Monocacy River for a couple of miles before cutting back through their neighborhood and ending up back at their brownstone, champions of a year long saga, together.
Raven K 