Outdoor adventures!

[Wylder Treejumper]

There is a photo for outdoor pictures... Let's discuss great places to camp, hike, hunt, fish, kayak, raft... You name it!

[Banya]

Cunningham Falls State Park, Maryland.  Great place to hike, swim, or simply relax in one of the many waterfall pools along the rock face.

[Izeroth]

Red River Gorge, Kentucky. Great place to hike, and it has some things people don't typically associate with Kentucky, like pine trees and massive plateaus.

[Wylder Treejumper]

Hmm... Deception Pass State Park, Washington. I've had a few adventures there myself, I can tell you!

[Banya]

New River Gorge, West Virginia.  A perfect place to hike and go white water rafting.  I've been here twice and loved it.

[Blaggut]

Teh tetl iz cunfoosing. Sud cheng.

[Lady Ashenwyte]

Teh tetl iz cunfoosing. Sud cheng.

Wut.

[Lutra]

I'll bite...you have to excuse the quality...this is back when we still had cameras that used film!



This was taken in 2003 when I was in the Adirondack mountains in upstate NY.

[Dawnwing]

Pictured Rocks Lakeshore, in the upper peninsula of Michigan.  I went on a five-day backpacking trip for a phy-ed credit for college; these are photos I took.  (There's also boat tours to see the cliffs from in front of them rather than on top of them, and some campgrounds in two parts of it, but these photos can only be taken by backpacking the backwoods trails for a couple days - which, yes, means filtering your own water and having to tie up your food in a bag every night so bears can't get it.) 

Awesome striped cliffs and rock formations, lovely beaches and private coves, sand dunes, a random old car in the woods dating back to the 30's miles from any road, shipwrecks, a lighthouse, wild blueberries, watching the sun set over the water every night and seeing the stars so clear overhead.  It was an incredible week.

[The Skarzs]

I thought this was a place for talking about adventures, not naming pictures. . .

To stray from that, I'll tell you all about my experience getting my scuba diving license.
  On the first day, we had gone to a bay [undisclosed] for the starting dive techniques. It was in February, and the water was very cold; it also happened to be the roughest those waters had been for many years, and the instructor had been diving there since he was eight. Every time he would try to tell us what to do, all we could hear would be "Okay, now when you submerge, take your mask and-grlbtbtbb!" a wave would wash over his face. Needless to say, it took a while to get those procedures done. Then we went down to 100 ft.
  On the second and third days, we went to another bay [also unnamed] which was far more secluded and still than the first. The water was also warmer, so that was a pleasant bonus. We did a few more procedures, including emergency air sharing and towing an exhausted diver. One of the tests was to submerge to thirty feet, take a deep breath from the BCD, and breath out the whole way.
  I didn't know I wasn't supposed to take the regulator out of my mouth.
  When I did reach the top, my nose was filled with water, I couldn't breath for my helpless gasping, and my regulator went on free-flow. Had to shut off my tank so it could work again. After I had caught my breath, we were able to do a decent free-dive, so that was fun. Oh yeah, and my BCD (buoyancy control device- this also holds the tank and all tools) had a leak in it, so I was exhausted because I kept on sinking when I needed to float.
  The last day was pretty simple: just a couple more easy tests to make sure we knew what we were doing and another free dive. However, the last test we needed to do was to take off our weight belt while underwater. . . and then put it back on. Now, it's surprising how easily you float to the surface when under water, even with another fifty-seventy pounds on you, so you need a substantial amount of weight. Taking off the weight belt was easy- in fact, I'll go so far as to say it was too easy. As soon as the clip was undone. . . bwo^ooooop! I started rising to the surface; the only thing keeping me down was my grip on the dangling belt.
  I think I was struggling to re-strap my belt for about five whole minutes, and as soon as I was successful in getting a small amount of it back in the teeth, I stood up. . . and the belt came off in my hand.
  Oh well.

Now I have my license, and I have seen so many beautiful things under the water, like octopi, eels, countless sea stars, starfish and crabs, and amazing anemone forests. It's awesome.