visitor

the last two days have been fabulous!!

a good irish friend of mine is is in states this summer on a J1 work visa, so i went into nyc on tuesday to visit her. our plan was to hang out for the day and try to see a broadway show. and so we had a fabulous time playing in the city and walking around central park and we didn't know what show we wanted to see and so we decided on in the heights - neither of us had heard anything about it. so asked at the box office, and it sounded good and it won a tony for best musical in 2008. we decided to try our luck at the lottery later that evening, but didn't win. but we still got tickets after that, and all i can say is wow! it was amazing! the dancing was incredible, the music was fun and catchy. and it was just overall really well done. so i totally recommend seeing it if you are in nyc! we had a great day talking, catching up on life and everything. we then caught a train back to jersey, as we were going hiking on wednesday!

as i knew karen throught the mountaineering club, it seemed perfect that we would hike while she was in the states. and also just to show her the difference between the two! so we decided to go to two of my favorite places, mt. tammany and sunfish pond. i hadn't hiked to either since summer 2003/2002. and i knew it would be a nice 10ish mile hike for the two. so we did my favorite mt. tammany first. and i just LOVE this hike. the views are gorgeous and if you just did tammany it would be like a 3 hour hike round trip. you go up the red dot trail, down the blue trail which connects to the appalachian trail for the last .5 down. we enjoyed ourselves, laughing about hiking in trees and it being HOT. and only having lunch, water, map and bugspray in our packs, instead of waterproofs, extra clothes and all the extra gear we would carry in ireland! so that was fun, when we got down to the blue/green trails intersected, we went up the green trail to sunfish pond and enjoyed hiking along the streams and up gradually until we got to sunfish pond. we enjoyed a late lunch along the side and sat on the rocks and enjoyed the view, then hikedthe 4.3 miles back downhill in a epic 1.5 hours. and then to continue showing karen my love of northwest nj, we went across the road (aka interstate 80) and showed karen the fabulous delaware river. which also gave us a great view of mt. tammany!

so it was a fun two days of seeing a great friend and getting to go to 2 of my favorite places, nyc and the delaware water gap!

view from top of tammany

karen and i

hiking up - delaware river

start of the hike!

nyc! my favorite place in central park

delaware river anf mt. tammany

rocks along sunfish pond

sunfish pond