The day is looking up!

I'm always hearing jokes about New Jersey being one long highway, or full of pollution, or only good for malls and diners. To the people who make those jokes, I'd just like to say:

We had an amazing hike today at Norvin Green State Forest. I had never been there before, but I found it online, it's only 35 minutes from our house and the description looked good. It was better than good. Boo kept saying it was the best hike we'd ever been on, and she's been hiking quite a bit for a suburban nine-year-old. There were rocks to climb, views, streams to rock-hop across, and places where Boo and Wonderdog could run. We had a picnic lunch in a big rocky place surrounded by trees, and a snack with this view:

We did have to portage Wonderdog across a couple of streams, but it was worth it:

On our way back to our car, we saw a black bear, but we weren't able to get a good picture. We were just as interested in staying away from it as it was interested in staying away from us.

When I said I wanted to do more active things with Boo and Wonderdog, this is just what I meant. Here's to many more!