One of those trails with a splendid combination of river, streams, tunnels, rail-line, good elevation profile and lots of rocks! Kids absolutely loved it! [gallery size=“large” ids=“8368,8367,8366,8365,8364,8363,8362,8361,8360,8359,8356,8355,8354”] Garmin Connect GPX
The trail we actually planned for had no parking spots left. Chanced upon Soapstone as we were driving back. A good 5mile loop with a decent elevation profile. [gallery size=“large” columns=“2” ids=“8351,8350,8349”] Garmin connect GPX
Took Appa out for a stroll. Shasta enjoyed a good bunch bobbling around the streams. [gallery size=“large” ids=“8344,8345,8346”]
A good 2.5 mile long drive within the Patapsco state park gets you to the start point of this trail. A small climb up the hills and amidst thick foliage winds over and gets you to Cascade falls. Great weather and wonderful streams! [gallery size=“medium” ids=“8331,8332,8333,8334,8335,8336,8337,8338,8339”] Garmin Connect GPX
This trail has been on my lists in the AllTrails app and for whatever reason, we haven’t had a chance to explore it yet. Decided on a whim to head here this Sunday. By-far one of the best hikes in Baltimore! [gallery link=“file” size=“large” ids=“8157,8148,8147,8149,8150,8155,8151,8152,8153,8154,8156,8158”] The trail as such is a tarred path winding up Ellicot city with multiple streams on either side. We decided to veer off on one of the sub-trails (Red trail) for some quality time out in the woods. With a mild breeze and a looming cloud shower, Shasta slept through most of it. Definitely heading back here later with Appa! ...
My Samsung phone by default generates pretty high resolution pictures. Even with the most basic setting, captured images turn out to be ~3MB! I’m not a huge photo buff and don’t necessarily need such high clarity pictures which consume a lot of space. I recently came across two amazing utilities that help optimize images in Linux: jpegoptim and optipng Install them via terminal: sudo apt-get install jpegoptim sudo apt-get install optipng And optimize away! ...
So far I had all the micro-servers in the home network connected either to a LAN port or to an Orbi Satellite. This week I implemented a simple 8 port un-managed TP-Link switch into my ‘homelab’. Costed just about 18 bucks with a price-match from amazon and it has tremendously improved upload/download speeds! Also it’s pretty cool to visually see that the RPi3B+ boards are being throttled at 10/100Mbps while the RPi4 is rummaging at 1000Mbps. ...
A glimpse of the past week and the few things that captivated my attention: With the kids at home, weather mostly good and the lock-down lifted we did venture out a bit and got a lot of hikes in this week. We obviously had all masks on and avoided crowded spaces. Also had this sudden realization that most of the hikes I was doing over the past few years in Baltimore were on the banks of the Patapsco river. Would be wonderful to plan a good long 15-20 miler one of these days. Should be a good recce for the half-marathon that I said I would organize for Meena, Nancy and Sharath next month! ...
Well, not quite! The main trail was closed out for repairs so we ended up exploring the woods around the reservoir. We haven’t explored this section much, so it was good coming back here after a long time. Lot’s of bush-whacking and getting lost, which was good! Weather was very accommodating. [gallery link=“file” size=“large” ids=“8119,8120,8123,8124,8125”]
At the end of our last week’s hike I sensed we were close to a small dam but we didn’t quite get to that point . Wanted to explore that section and also cover the Alberta road trail. Meena and I head out this afternoon with the kids. While the trail was beautiful and the kids did have a real good time, I didn’t quite feel great. With temps reaching 85+ and absolutely no breeze, I was so glad when we were done with the hike. Totally about 2.5 miles. ...