Before starting this adventure, I honestly didn’t consider hiking to be hard. You are just walking, right?!? Living where I do, I’ve had the opportunity to experience the outdoors…my family lives near Mendon Ponds Park which has several nice, hilly (or so I thought) trails. We even ventured out to Letchworth State Park to go camping and hiking a few times. Little did I know that those are just speed bumps compared to hiking in the ADK Mountains…..
VS 
(Mendon Ponds Trail) (Mount Marcy)
As you can see, I had quite a different viewpoint of “hiking” before my first trip. Let’s just say a lot has changed. Hiking is HARD, tiring, draining, wet, muddy, dirty, stinky….WHY am I doing this again???