Little Gifford Mountain

Last Sunday, 4/39/07, Randy and I along with my brother Steve and his son Justin, their dog Apothis, and my youngest niece, Emily, all went on our annual hike to Little Gifford Mountain. The mountain is in our backyard, so to speak. From our houses, we can see a big ledge and this is our hiking destination. So we start out about 10:30am. Emily has a bad ankle from a soccer incident on Saturday but she started out really well. We took a fairly direct route up the mountain. Since it's pretty steep, we spent quite a bit of time on hands and feet, crawling up the ledges. A route we took last year was not so direct and not so steep. Anyway, we got up there about noon. Randy, Emily and I had brought easy to eat foods; sandwich, fruit, etc.. Steve and Justin did a cookout of hot dogs. Steve made a fire but it wasn't easy as it was kind of misty and the ground was very wet. Finally done, they cooked up the dogs and of course Apothis got his share too. Putting the fire out and cleaning up the site we headed back down the mountain. Naturally, it went a lot faster going down and we were back at the house by 2:15pm.