King of the 'Loaf

Once we discovered that Punxsutawney, Pa is nowhere near Philly, we gave up our dreams of a joint Groundhog Day/Philly Cheese Steak adventure, and settled instead for enjoying an un-February-like hike around Sugarloaf Mountain in Dickerson MD. Thanks to Mary for coming up with the idea!

Here are some notes from the hike:

• We met at the West View parking lot, which meant we started the hike by driving nearly all the way to the top!

• We did a 7 mile circuit primarily along the Blue loop, with some excursions along the White loop around the summit.

• "Well it is possible to burp and taste fish oil" Dave reconsiders, after first defending fish oil vitamins as not having a bad taste.

• Always check for a post-hike-ice-cream-venue before the hike. My car's GPS left us with the options of a "Jimmie Cone" (where no one answered the phone) or a Dairy Queen.

• At the DQ, most of us felt a small Blizzard would have been big enough, and while I didn't know it on Saturday, I now whole-heartedly endorse the Banana Split Blizzard with Chocolate Ice Cream (you have to ask for the chocolate ice cream specially).
  
  
• Right next door to the Germantown DQ is a Blimpie that serves Boardwalk Fries that really hit the post-post-hike-ice-cream spot—but they lie about serving the Nathan's Hot Dogs on their poster.
  
  
• Rocky joined us for what would be his last hike before moving to San Francisco, and we got to see some of what his gadgetry could do on a hike. His GPS created a map of where we hiked, and by simply "synchronizing watches" between his camera and his GPS he has software that will automatically tag the exact coordinates of each picture... now if it just knew the orientation of the photo. Rocky pointed out that you can even import the data into Google Earth to get a 3D walkthough of the hike (as seen above), complete with embedded photos—each dot will bring up a photo.
  
  
• The "Don't Try This at Home Kids" note of the hike was Dave stepping across a 40 foot deep chasm to climb into a crack in the rock that let him slide through the cliff and come out the other side where he was thankfully able to scramble down.
  
  
• The diamond shaped blazes we saw around White Rocks don't seem to be standard trail blazes, but the offset vertically stacked rectangles indicate the direction of the turn, and triple blazes can be used for trail heads, ends, or spurs depending on the configuration.
  
  
• Reagan received a testimonial, "She's cute and furry" from a little boy on the trail (despite her penchant for rolling around in dead animals and scat on this particular hike)