Photos: Deer Lakes’ Orange and White Trail Loop

The first hike of the year and season! At Deer Lakes in Frazer and West Deer Townships in Westmoreland County, PA. A storm blew by the day before: very windy but not a ton of rain. There was enough rain, though, to make a lot of spots muddy. Except for one spot that took us onto a service road and behind a maintenance building, it was all trees, all the time. Since the cold weather only recently broke, there wasn’t any leafy shade; the sun slapped us through the slats between tree trunks.

Some establishing shots at the beginning. Note the clear skies:

The blazes were on the trees, but once in a while we saw these new-looking posts with blazes on them. Never saw them done this way before. Interesting:

A big fella:

This was a VLSPA: a Very Large Solar Panel Array. My term for it, and it probably wasn’t all that big compared to some others:

Two shots of a big boy that looked to have fallen very recently, as it hadn’t been cleaned up from the path:

We weren’t sure what this was. It looked to be clay or ceramic, but I have no idea about these things. Size 9 1/2 mens’ boot for reference:

Those are Wolverine boots, by the way. I didn’t know how insanely priced they are, but I got them maybe 4 or 5 years ago on store-closing clearance for $30. I don’t do construction or anything heavy duty, so I don’t know how they fare with that stuff, but they are solid hiking/walking boots.

He wanted me to take a photo of his shoes near the end:

The route. We didn’t go all that fast, and we stopped to snack, retrace steps after taking a wrong turn, etc. Three miles isn’t terribly long but it’s a lot longer when you haven’t done a hike in a while: