A loop in Rock Creek

We actually spend more time doing trail maintenance in Rock Creek than hiking it, so for the "other national park" hike as part of Hike with PATC in 2023, we went down to Rock Creek. Our loop started at the Nature Center and went clockwise, for a little over five miles. 

On the western side of the park, we started off at Fort Russy, which we have visited before, and then return to the outer loop, spending time on paved trails. Since we never do trail work on paved trails, that section was new to us. We then crossed over to the Valley Trail. Personally, I enjoy the valley trail, since it follows the creek. We then crossed back over, returning to the Nature Center. 

We enjoyed nice weather, and a chance to get out without carrying any tools!

Patapsco Valley State Park

Patapsco Valley State Park is a heavily used park on the edge of Baltimore. T had been there before, but not I, so we decided to visit it for Hike with PATC 2023 as our other state park.

The one really unusual thing is that is has a large network of unofficial, unmaintained trails that the park administration is fine with. Usually, parks try to close down most or all unofficial trails. But Patapsco says right on their website that, "We have over 200 miles of trails, with 70 of those miles identified as maintained trails." 

In practice, this meant that signs and blazes were very inconsistent, so we did a lot of route-checking as we went along.

We set out to do a loop from one of the PATC hiking guides, but we got a late start to our day and did a truncated version. After parking at the Orange Grove area, we crossed the swinging bridge and did a loop on the other side of the Patapso River. It was a pretty hike, and it's definitely a park I'd like to go back to.