Camping - Days 3 and 4 (Monongahela National Forest: Summit Lake)

We started out early for about an 8 mile hike, but this was mostly flat and on forest roads.  We discovered tons of these bright orange newts (Eastern Red-spotted Newt), some frogs, butterflies, caterpillars later on as we headed back to camp.  We even saw an assortment of animal scat.  I'm pretty sure some of it was bear poop, or possibly bobcat.  This did nothing to allay my fears, especially because we weren't on a busy trail and saw no other humans.  And other than newts and frogs, very little animal life. 

After our hike we headed to a distant town, bigger than the nearest town in hopes of cheap gas prices, and good cell reception so we could check in with the kids.  When we got back to our car we saw that a small, camouflage tent and a plastic chair were now occupying the campsite next to us that the host was saving for the elderly couple with the wrong date.  That's the only activity we ever saw there.  No one showed up that night either.  In town, we hit a Walmart and a Bob Evans as well as a gas station.  And that's about all the bigger town had.

Back near camp, we decided to check out the trail around Summit Lake.  B had gone out in the morning to see if the trail around the lake was muddy from that night's rain, and it was, so we opted for the forest road hike.  But the trail around the lake that evening looked dry, so we made plans to hike it the next morning.  We also spotted a snake slithering through the bushes.  This is the first time that I can ever remember coming across a snake in the wild (that wasn't crossing a road I was driving on).  The bottom right picture is zoomed in on the snake's head.  The middle left picture is his body slithering through the shrubs.

Caterpillars were everywhere!  This teeny one was on the tent.

Full from dinner at Bob Evans and with damp firewood from the previous night's rain, we decided to skip dinner.  We read and played SkipBo and headed to bed.  After sleeping a couple of hours, thunder and lightning woke me up and we moved to the car for about 30 minutes of the storm.  Then back to the tent and to sleep.  B woke up the next morning and fried up our Kielbasa sausages and onions and potatoes making our tin foil dinner we missed into a breakfast.  We packed everything up, and after the constant rain all night, skipped the trail around the lake and headed to the Cranberry Glades, a bog with a half mile boardwalk trail.
While on the boardwalk we both got spooked and jumped when we surprised a snake and it flipped out.  Luckily it slithered away into the bog.

I held on to B's GPS watch while he used the bathroom.  Comparison.