Annual Brother's Trip into Nature...... if only for the day

Matt, Chris Joe and I ventured away from our families and our everyday activities and met at Batso forest in New Jersey for a day of being outside, together, in nature.

We changed it up a lot this year, for one, we didn't make Joe drive two hours, just to drive two or three more hours away to get to our camping destination.  We also didn't spend the night outside, we only got in a day hike for about 5 hours, accomplishing ten miles through the Jersey woods.

The weather called the shots, it was supposed to be complete crap on Sunday and none of us wanted to be trudging through slop on the way out, let alone packing up in the morning in the pouring rain, just to get soaked the whole way back to the car.  It ended up being a smart call due to the fact that it rained relentlessly Saturday night and most of Sunday morning.

There wasn't much to the trail, although it was well marked and apparently heavily used.  For the most part it was single track, easy flat walking and was clean.  However, on the road you could almost set your watch by how many beer cans there were along the way.  People who trash places like this are the ones who take away our ability to enjoy them, and not trash them.  It's really ridiculous, it's got to be locals because I cannot imagine people coming in, at night, getting hammered and leaving.  It wouldn't be difficult to spot them.

There were no real sights, just the guy in front of you and underbrush everywhere.  We took the Batso trail and made a loop with the road to bring us back to our cars.  There was a little bit of water views every now and then, but there's not a lot to see.  The park is huge and there's plenty of trails to explore, even if there's not a ton to see in the sense of look outs and the like.  It's a neat piece of nature that doesn't exist many other places.

We ended up spending the night at Joe's shore house, dry and warm, with clean clothes and an actual bed to sleep in.  It was a night night of hanging out, watching movies, making fun of each other.

It wasn't what we, okay Chris and I, thought of originally but it was the right decision and it was just nice to get out, accomplish something huge (I haven't hiked ten miles in one day in years) and spend time with each other.  Next year, we're definitely getting out for an over night trip, we'll just have to hope for nice weather... or weather we can actually tolerate.