On a cloudy, overcast sky Saturday morning, 17 hikers gathered at the end of Rebman lane, to be led by Melanie Kasson on a hike involving several trails, including parts of the River to River trail, in the South part of Ferne Clyffe State park. We had  2 new hikers, 1 from Vienna, IL and 1 from Nashville TN. All the rest were returning hikers. Remembering that “what goes down, must come back up” we headed NE, down a wide trail. We crossed several “dry” streams today, since, again & still the area has had little rainfall. Trees are turning colors, but, the colors are quite muted. Lots of leaves have already fallen on trails. We wound around and found the Natural bridge/arch, and ate lunch under it. While we were there, one thru-hiker from Aurora came walking up to us.  We chatted with him, asked him if we could help in any way, and he said he needed bandages(probably for blisters). Several hikers found bandages in their backpacks and gave them to him. We included him, Lucas, on the left side in our group picture. Rain sprinkles threatened right at the start of the hike, but nothing materialized at all during or after the hike. We ended up covering 6.5 miles on todays’ hike. 

Next weeks’ hike will be in the Dutchman lake area. Park down by the boat launch. Megan H. will be our hike leader. Until then, “See ya’ll On the Trail.