urban hiking

Now, I'm using the term "urban" loosely here.  This isn't a major metropolitan area by any means.  My point, though, is that we went hiking this weekend on a lovely wooded trail that's adjacent to my town's biggest commercial center.   You can go to the mall, and then a fraction of a mile away you can hike for a solid hour.  No joke.

You can hear cars going by, but visually you'd never know you're still remarkably close to civilization most of the time.  We even watched as an owl flew across the trail in front of us, landed on a branch in a nearby tree, and stared at us for several minutes.