I hiked Hartwood Acres twice. The first was a route suggested by AllTrails, a mix of different blazed and unblazed paths. The second was the shorter, more standard Yellow blazed trail.
In general, it wasn’t as scenic as I had hoped. All the leaves had fallen and there wasn’t much variation or interesting views. The original path suggested was much longer, but leaves covering the trail made everything go a little bit slower and more difficult.
These next two are of the same clearing from a slightly different perspective, facing southwest, towards Saxonburg Boulevard, right before we took the shortcut.
The end of the first hike. It’s nearly impossible to see but in the distance there are a few people flying some kites.
We’re the blue arrow here, right where we took the shortcut, which cut out a few miles. The green part of the trail map is the untrod path. The “wrong turn” alert on the app was helpful, but you’ll notice that we’ve walked almost 10 miles. That part is inaccurate since we did maybe 2 and a half by this point. Somehow I started tracking our hike while we were still driving there. AllTrail’s UI can be a little unintuitive sometimes.
The beginning of the second hike. The temperature was about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, right on the border (for me) for needing gloves.
There were lots of trees with ribbons around them. Remembering back during the Gulf War, when yellow ribbons around trees and that Tony Orlando song were a huge thing, I thought the pink version would have similar meaning. Google says pink is probably the management marking the trees off for various purposes.
A small creek.
I had “Also Sprach Zarathustra” in mind when I saw this scene. Below the sun is one of the many abstractly-shaped sculptures that are scattered around the estate. They are rather uninspiring to me, so I didn’t bother taking any up close photos of them.
Much more accurate trail tracking here. I probably could have done this much more quickly—I’m an expert walker, you know—but I didn’t want an intense hike.
2 Comments
From my experience, pink ribbons indicate three things. In a straight line, they are survey markers. On rare occasions they indicate a path for some kind of development (cutting a path/road or burying utility lines). In a cluster, they indicate something found (as in criminal/historical evidence), or something about to be sited there.
A lot of the ribbons I saw were in clusters, or at least very near each other, on the edge of where the trees started on the trail path, so it makes me wonder if they are going to be cleared.