Making Friends!

So in my attempt to meet new people and get out when Mark is gone I joined a "Meet Up" group. Mark will go when he's here - hopefully next weekend. This particular group is for newbies in Wappingers Falls. They do all sorts of things - movie night, game nights, hikes, bbq's and the like. Some are couples and some are singles. All very friendly and chatty. So last weekend while Mark was gone I went on my first hike. This is a picture of us before we set off. The red balloon was to help us find each other.

We started out following the trail - smart if you are new to the area. Well in our attempt to avoid a hill we ended up climbing an even larger hill off the trail -as you can see this is a group with varied abilities and I was the only one wearing shorts - it was at least 75-80 degrees. There was quite a bit of huffing and puffing, but everyone finished.

For some reason this particular trail just stopped and we decided to just go up the hill rather than try to go back. It was like a bunch of little kids thinking they were being adventurous. We had no idea where we were going, but it turned out to be a cemetary at the top of the hill! Of all places. The guys very much enjoyed this find as many of the graves were really old. As you can see quarters are tight - these headstones are actually from another cemetary that had to be moved - that freaked us all out. Thinking those souls must be not so happy to be so crammed together. It really is a large cemetary - this was just a special little section.

To top off our hike we found the road that the nature preserve was on - a 4 lane highway. And across this busy road we saw our first wildlife. Yes deer - lots of deer. I was a bit worried we might see one get smacked in traffic, but we didn't. Finally we took one last shot at the estate/nature preserve we were hiking at - it's Samual J. Morse (think Morse code) home. Hoping to take a tour when they open later this spring.