I am fortunate to have a good number of walking and bike trails close to my home. In the past to get my steps in, I mostly walked around Nazareth, PA where I live.
The town has had a steady population of 6,000 through the years and is less than 2 square miles. Considering I like a good long walk, especially when I don’t have work, I’ve covered all the streets in town more than once.
While the walking is good for my physical being, the environment is good for my mental being. When I walk I typically listen to a Tolkien themed podcast. Sometimes I lock in on the subject and other times it is background noise as I walk, wonder, and take in the scenery. I recently bought a monocular so I can better see the nature that is all around me on my walks. I went with the monocular because it was more portable than a pair of binoculars.
About two weeks ago, I went to Penn Pump Park, which is a part of the Palmer Bikeway and a sub-set of the Two Rivers Trailway. Since it is not a loop, I first walked east toward the City of Easton and stopped to turn around at a parking lot and retraced my steps to Penn Pump Park and went past it to Newlin’s Mill Road where there is a Park with ten pickleball courts and then returned to my car.
It was a good walk along the Bushkill despite it being in the mid-thirties. On Saturday, after wrestling practice, I went to the same trail but picked it up further west in the town of Tatamy, PA. I walked east to Newlin’s Mill Road, and as it was closer than I thought, started to continue east until the trail had more ice than I was willing to navigate, so I turned around. I did an ‘unofficial’ loop through a neighborhood to get some extra steps in and finished with a little under three miles.
These were reasonably short. My plan is to keep going to local ones and weather permitting, get to a different one once a week in the spring and summer. In the fall I’d like to try some a bit further away such as Hawk Mountain and the Appalachian Trail (just a small part of it;-) probably in Wind Gap, which is close to my home and maybe Delaware Water Gap, which is also not that far.
Resilient Seeker Coaching | Ross Raymond Nunamaker 