The First MOFO of YOFO
Path so far - we covered some ground!
As of 7 July, we've completed our first "Month of fun outside" (see "About" on the webpage for an explanation of "YOFO"). We thought we’d keep track of a few things, some practical and some not-so-much so, and share those. We began our adventure on 8 June, departing from Silver Lake Farm in Lewisberry, PA and in one month we’ve logged 3,776 miles. 2,229 of those miles were spent traveling to 11 different campsite locations in five states and one Canadian province thus far. Three of those states were completely new to at least one of us. Our in-and-around miles at each location has added up to 1,547 (that’s a lot of sight-seeing miles!). Of course, all those miles aren’t free…we burned through 360.16 gallons of diesel at a cost of $946.63.
We’ve been doing our best to carpe each diem with all the free stuff the outdoors has to offer. Our FO (fun outside….or effing off) stats: hiking – 33.1 miles; mountain biking –55.8 miles; road biking - 67.6 miles; trail running - 19.74 miles; kayaking – 37.6 miles. We spent about 58 hours moving our bodies (well, at least when we remembered to press “start” on Dawn’s GPS watch) and covered over 226 miles. And before comment on the rather dismal average speed...there's a whole lot of jaw-dropping scenery and picture-taking going on which slows us down. Of course we'll never admit to the slim possibility that it is the ice cream and beer!
Eagles versus PB&Js...
Our wildlife sighting has gone to the birds – as in they dominate the stats. No large mammals in the first month but we’re keeping our eyes open! We’ve spotted (at least) 8 bald eagles (some were spectacular), which equals the number of PB&J’s we’ve eaten (none were spectacular, just all-American). Other fun bird sightings include lots of loons making lovely tunes, osprey, yellow-bellied sap sucker, great blue heron, red-pileated woodpecker, trumpeter swan, wild turkey, red-tailed hawk and of course many ducks and Canadian geese. Lest you think we’re some sort of ornithology experts, we have a great bird identification program on the iPhone called Merlin. It is produced by Cornell University, and is both fun and easy to use. Stars among the mammals include river otter, beaver, deer, plenty of curious squirrels and chipmunks. The moose remained an elusive photographic prey, although as you now may have read, we spotted one with her calf just days into our second month on an unscheduled jaunt back into Canada.
Snapchat pic. Follow connifd and stodterd for more "shits and grins." Don't worry, we're only selling adventure!
An observation which will sound rather – “well…duh!” – but as we explore the great outdoors it has become more and more apparent how little we actually know about the natural world that is now our “living room.” Both of us fancy ourselves as well-educated, but we are like kindergartners when it comes to exploring. We are trying to pick up a new plant or animal or bird at each place we stop, but moving through large sections of landscape makes it tough. As does the frequent lack of the ability to use the “Googles” – it is crazy how much we rely on our phones for everything from navigation to species identification to settling the inane debates over “how long do bison live” or “what do loons eat?” or any of the other random topics that pop up while hiking, kayaking, driving, etc. As we have moved into Lewis and Clark territory, neither of us would have been draft choices for that expedition based on our natural world knowledge. And, given our fire-starting abilities, our mammalian non-spotting, and general lack of “is this edible or poisonous” knowledge, we likely wouldn’t have survived long.
Thanks you for tracking our adventures. It makes it more fun for us to be able to share our experiences and goofy photos with our family and friends. We've been using Snapchat (conniffd and stodterd), FB, Twitter, and now Instagram (YOFOAdventures) to let folks in on our wandering, so if you want you can also follow the story there too.