Hiking Adventures
Hiking
My life in Hiking all started in the latter part of 2016. Levi, my youngest son and I had completed a lengthy 3 year workout program series from Athlean X.
As this was monumental, due to the extreme intensity with which Athlean X drives their programs, we decided a celebration was in order. We headed to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park to see what that was all about. We spent, I believe, about a week in the park venturing out onto various trails and hikes through the mountains.
We were officially hooked. We became hikers and have never looked back.
In the ensuing years, we would make a number of trips up into those mountains. However, we would soon venture out into larger mountains, visiting the Rocky Mountains along with the Sierra Nevada range in California. The Grand Tetons also made our list of places in which to hike as has a vast array of epic locations all throughout Arizona and Utah.
For a while, I invested heavily in significant levels of backpacking gear. Medium to light weight gear. I spent a few years learning all things back packing and hiking.
I loved the idea of hiking deep into the woods to set up camp and stay over night in an attempt to do epic photography.
In the upcoming years I would eventually hike and backpack into the wilderness for multiple day and night stays. Most of these hikes were done into the Appalachians as they were close to my home in Florida.
Ultimately, I have to admit that I never really fell totally in love with the whole carrying everything in a pack up a huge mountain to camp out. Far too much to carry and travel with along with keeping it all organized.
Furthermore, this type of experience isn’t really conducive to doing the kinds of photography I enjoy. Once I added my camera and drone gear into my packs, I’d be hitting weights of upwards to or even beyond 50lbs. I just could not get to a place where I would enjoy such long, difficult hikes carrying that kind of gear to boot.
Due to the weight limitations along with the space limitations, ultimately, I have migrated more to what are called “out and back” hikes. These being hikes an individual can accomplish in a single day. This opens up many doors for me as much of the hiking I now choose to do is of this model and it still presents amazing photography opportunity.
I have hiked many such day hikes all around the country. From Tennessee to North Carolina, California, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, to Arizona and Montana, even New Mexico. There is no shortage of epic day hikes around the United States. And I consider my self a bit of an expert on where to hike and how. Yet, I have only scratched the surface.
Though the Living With Rob blog, I will often share a recent hike, how I found it, what it showed us, and even what I was able to photograph while there. Be sure to follow the blog to see the most recent hike and posts.
Throughout the Hiking section of my blog, you are will find helpful articles about hiking and all the various hikes I’ve accomplished or hope to at some point accomplish. Please be sure to visit the hiking section of the blog and sign up for the blog to receive updates for every hike.
The Mesquite Sand Dune Field is one of many dune fields in Death Valley National Park. It’ here I enjoy doing sunrise and sunset photography. The Mesquite Sand Dune Field is the most popular in the park due to their ease of access. This also makes landscape photography more challenging as the people are either in the shot or their footprints ruin the cohesiveness of many potential photographs. Today, I’ll show you around the area as well as share a few choice photographs I was able to capture while there n April.