I love backpacking and camping. I went on my first such East-Coast trip to Catskills, NY. I had prviously been on a couple trips on the West-Coast while in LA... Those were different times and different terrain...
Our first major pitstop was at a lake (Hodge Pond if I'm not mistaken). There were several pretty flowers and butterflies flitting about next to the lake. We preferred to flit in the water... :) The gooey, ticklish lake bed didn't stop us from swimming :)
Maggie decorated Lauren with wildflowers :):):):)
Butterflies were as huge as a baby's head!!!! (PS: I don't know why I compare it to a baby's head!)
Mark caught a water-lizard thingy... I forgot what its called..... Eeeks!
It took me a long time to decide to swim. Other adventurous souls were already in!
After the swim, all of us were drying ourselves in the hot afternoon sun... In no time, rain clouds surrounded us and thus began the downpour that would countinue for the rest of the afternoon. I managed to scramble to safety before the rain hit us... others weren't so lucky...
This was taken before it started raining really heavily... we stopped and waited for almost half an hour for the burst of rain to stop before proceeding..
This was our trail! Fern, bush, grass and mud had reclaimed almost the entire width of the trail for themselves.... Colored tree markers were the only real way of not getting lost in the wilderness...
Everyone smiles for the picture.. although most of us are atleast slightly tired of lugging our camping gear for the last 5-6 miles :) [from front the back: Sky, Lauren, Maggie, Mark]
The woods were blanketed in mist and clouds.... The sunlight that managed to filter through made this a very surreal scene!
The only wildlife along the trail :) To be fair, we also saw toads, frogs, lizards, dead porcupines and deer at different points along the trail.
”The tail goes this way“ said the falled old tree stump.
A young new forest is taking shape in the remote Catskills.... It is the most dense when young trees are still fighting it out for survival by reaching higher and taller to sunlight and life... Not everyone will make it.
Sky demonstrates her skills in a cabin we discovered at the campsite. It would be our refuge from the frightening-lighting storm and heavy rain that followed soon after dinner....
Quick Pond itself didn't impress much. The water was stagnant and full of algae=like matter... But we'd got our swimming done at an earlier pond and weren't complaning...
Mark and Sky lit us a fantastic campfire!!!
This was the log cabin we stayed in.... Too bad we carried our tents all the way and set them up only to realize that the cabin was a better place to spend the night :)
It was foggy when we woke up... but the sky looked mostly clear otherwise.. no storm clouds that had plagued us the night before...
As a photographer, I've always found it difficult to do justice to sunrises and sunsets. The colors are hard to reproduce, the moment too fleeting to capture and the experience impossible to communicate. Foolishly I keep trying.
The fog did start to thicken up as the sun rose higher above the trees....
