finding myself

i decided to grab my junior naturalist bag and go up to the preston pond trails for a walk.

i thought i'd also go to a place that later on i could find on a topo map to do that thing from the venture challenge, "Use a map and compass or GPS to place yourself on a topographic map (10 pts)"

i'm all about fun and games, especially fun and games that involve maps, so the trickiest bit of this one is figuring which episode of this i'd like to document.

libby's look is good for this because a) it is close to my home and b) it is kind of a distinct geographical feature that you can see on satellite imaging and check your map work.

libby's look is a nice outcrop with a view and now it has a loop trail instead of the original spur trail. a bit before i ran into the lower end of the loop trail, i came across a pretty clear road sort of thing.

you know what these look like if you spend time in the woods. they're very LIKE a road, but you can tell what they're for most times by the presence of slash or sugar lines, sometimes both.

anyway, i walked up this thing, thinking that maybe it would be another way up to libby's look or maybe it would take me to the trail higher up or if not i could bushwhack over.

i got to the top and i was clearly in streeter's sugarbush. i turned on my GPS to mark the spot for reference, but also since i have topo maps on my GPS, i was able to use that to set a course for libby's look based on geographic profile because libby's look is not a location that gets labeled on most maps.

based on direction and contour lines i had two possibilities for it, and chose to set course for the near one because you can always go on, but backtracking kinda sucks. either way i had some bushwhacking to do on pretty steep terrain. i suprised a VERY large deer and yah-boo, i will tell you that meeting an animal that large will get your adrenaline going.

also there were some nice plants and cute little birds, so yay!

my bushwhack necessarily had to bring me down again before i could go up again, and i was figured to run into trail. i didn't run into it right where i expected it, but pretty close. and then of course the trail took me up pretty close to my guessed destination, which turned out not to be libby's look, but it was a simple matter to just stay on the trail until i DID get to libby's look.

view from here

and the MAP!!