North Country Trail: Spruce Pond to Jones Hill

This summer has been hot.  Not just regular old summer hot, but really freaking ungodly hot.  HOT hot.  I've mentioned this before (broken record alert!), but heat is not my friend.  I am immeasurably thrilled that the forecast for later this week and into the weekend is for significantly cooler weather.  But between appointments and birthday parties and non-compatible travel, it has been far too long since I'd been out hiking, and I just couldn't wait another week to get in the woods.  Since I knew temperatures were going to exceed 90 degrees today, I wanted a shorter hike, so we went with Option 3 from the hiking menu I made Frankie a few weeks ago.

North Country Trail: Shackham Road to Tinker Falls

On a lark, I wrote up a "hiking menu" last night after Frankie went to bed.  I included some brief descriptive information about four different sections of the North Country National Scenic Trail (NCT) and showed it to him in the morning.  While he ate breakfast, he read through the menu and announced he wanted to do hike number 2.  This was welcome news!  All the options were of interest to me, of course, or I wouldn't have included them.  However, I was most looking forward to this one, even though we hiked the adjacent section of trail last week.  Options 1 and 4 follow the abandoned Lehigh Valley Railroad, and as a result, are quite flat.  They are also located in a more developed landscape, closer to roads and houses and such.  Option 3 is a lovely hike that is also adjacent to last weeks hike (on the other side); Frankie and I did it last summer and will certainly repeat it at some point.  Morgan Hill State Forest, especially, and the abutting Labrador Hollow Unique Area, has a remote rugged aspect that really appeals to me, and Option 2 was all new territory for me.