Justin and I went for our weekly Turkey Run hike, this time we brought Barry along with us.

Here he is preparing for his trek into the woods

This is Barry

We started off our hike on trail 4 which runs past the old Lusk Coal mine.  The tiny mine is now a sealed off bat habitat.  We intersected and hit a portion of trail 8, only after taking a misguided turn and winding up in the clearing of the Lusk Home…oops.

The main advantage of early morning hiking is milder temperatures, though it was still in the low 80s, and sitting at 90% humidity, the hike was bearable.  The disadvantage of early morning hikes however, is spiderwebs.  As the first people out on trail, you’re going to walk into hundreds of webs.  The easiest way to deal with this is to walk with your hiking stick out, flailing it about destroying the webs before you touch them.

Sorry little guy, you're in my way!

Of course, me being terrified of spiders, I got one on my hand and had a panic attack.  For those not in the know, I’m highly prone to losing my shit when I see spiders.

We hiked along the stream until we intersected with Trail 3’s beautiful Punchbowl at the very top of the falls.

Topside the Punchbowl Waterfall

Up here we met Charlie and his family.  This is Charlie the Vizsla, no relation to Dennis.

This is Charlie the Vizsla!

Charlie comes from the mythical city of Chicago, and apparently he really enjoys Turkey Run hikes!

After meeting Charlie and his family, we went down the trail to the bottom of the Punchbowl where we basked in the cool damp air and fine mist produced by the little waterfall.  The Punchbowl is a great cooling off point, I’m glad we came upon it when we did as we were all overheating a little bit.

Justin and Barry "cooling off" at the Punchbowl

After the Punchbowl silliness, we headed on towards Rocky Hollow, one of my favorite features at Turkey Run and a must-see on any hike through the park!  Barry put aside his slight fear of heights to walk up the ledge.  Many hikers walk through the hollow area, putting hand and foot on the rockface, which over time has caused unnatural erosion to occur.   Many are unaware of how damaging human skin and oils are to natural stone fatures.

Barry on a ledge at Rocky Hollow

After passing through this area, one final challenge awaited us, the hike down the waterfall.  The rock is slick, and the trail runs straight down the center of the small falls, making hiking in higher waters a little difficult.  We managed without accidents thankfully, though Barry did luckily talk himself out of a stunt that likely would have resulted in us having to run him to the hospital.

The trip was fun, we enjoyed having Barry along as a hiking partner, and he seemed to enjoy the experience, even though I did make the suspension bridge move a little while he was on it.

We are fortunate enough to be able to record video with our digital camera, thus recordered some of Barry’s finer moments on the hike.  Enjoy: