Continuing from our previous hike report of Tibbet Knob, we spent the weekend camped out along Forest Road 92 in the George Washington National Forest.
After our early dinner following our short hike to Tibbet Knob, we decided to explore downstream on the Stony Creek Trail next to our campsite. As the Chinese proverb goes “飯後百步走，活到九十九” or after dinner 100 steps, live to 99. Well, a little more than 100 steps in our case but the stroll out to Woodstock Reservoir was the perfect fit for that sentiment.
The area around Stony Creek in the Lee Ranger District of George Washington National Forest is an go to for car camping or semi-car camping ever since we moved to D.C. Typically, we’d make the mile long hike up Little Stony Creek for our own isolated spot, but there are plenty along Forest Road 92 itself. We decided to grab one of those this time around on a last minute trip
with a new mix of friends now that we’ve all had the jab. Hopefully this is the first of many more excursions.
While here, we explored a couple of the smaller hikes. The first being Tibbet Knob, the lesser known outcrop on the same ridge as the popular Big Schloss.
In this second installment of our road trip, we started with a hike on Glaciar Exploradores in Puerto Río Tranquilo before starting out drive north ending at Futaleufú. These second 4 days were much smoother than our first as we did 3 hikes and had a run in with a local hawk. This is a companion video to my 2019 Patagonia and Carretera Austral trip report series, which is listed below in the index.
My current struggle in life is the constant feel of needing to optimize my time. It’s the feeling that I need to be productive whenever possible, but I don’t think I am actually any more than before in the overall scheme of things. Maybe I started to feel this way because of the combination of how easy I can waste a day and just the never ending to do lists. Whatever the reason, it makes it very difficult to relax as anything nonproductive comes with a feel of regret in the end. This specific struggle carries over into the realm of traveling as well when it comes to unplanned and free form travel. It is hard not to feel the need to do something at every minute. But at the same time, unplanned free form travel is the cure as you don’t have anywhere to be but to relax and immerse yourself in the beauty out there. There is no place better for me to relearn that than the remote regions in Chile on the Carretera Austral.
carefree zone
In the spirit of free form travel, the hikes and activities we throughout the rest of our trip wasn’t really in any organizable order. This is due to a few travel restrictions and situational parameters that are explained in the post. So this part of the trip report will cover our decisions as we went, the specific route that we took, and our driving experiences on the Carretera Austral. Subsequent sections will delve into the different hikes and major activities that I will mention in this overview of our trip.
We pick up this trip report the day after our Huemul Circuit hike (see part 2 of this series). This is part 3 of my Patagonia and Carretera Austral trip report series. You can navigate to the other parts in the index below. Read More
Spring is here and so is wedding season. We had back-to-back weddings to attend; one is Wisconsin and another in Buffalo. So being economical, we decided to do 3 one-way flights, a couple days of camping, and work remotely. The Upper Peninsula sounded like a great idea being 1.5 hours away from Appleton, Wisconsin. Even though this Michigander troll took cheaters route to go up north, it was well worth it.
