Swallow Falls/Deep Creek Lake

Labor Day weekend pretty much equals outdoor time, and gives me the opportunity to go a little further away than normal since I have time to travel. But not too far. So we went just about as far west in Maryland as you can go without entering West Virginia. Deep Creek Lake is right a big ski resort, so I'd been out there, but only in the winter. It was time for some summer love.

We manged to arrive before dark on Friday (thank you boss-lady for letting me work from home so I could leave 2 hours early, no commute = yay!) so we set up camp and then sat back and relaxed around the campfire. There was wine and really good conversation. And a hammock.

Saturday we went on a mini-hike. It was still probably 6-7 miles total, but it was all flat and many little trails so there were stopping points. The best part was all the water. You know I'm a sucker for water. The 3.5 miles through the woods? Nice, sure, but I prefer waterfalls and rivers to just trees. Anyway we went backwards and saw the large falls first. These are the tallest in Maryland - Muddy Creek Falls.

The rest of the trail followed two rivers (that at some point in the trail met, so then you follow river 2). The second river is a big place for whitewater kayaking. I like little rapids, but these were way too much. I kept saying "oh I can do this part" but then you hit super white water and realize I should just stay off this river.

So, seeing as we were at Swallow Falls State Park...yeah there was Upper Swallow Falls and Lower Swallow Falls. One I could kayak over, the other made me want to cry. I an see now how it's doable, I just don't trust my ability to paddle through well enough. We'll leave white water to the crazier people.

After Swallow Falls, we drove over to a park 5 miles away. This was all woods hiking, which was a shame since there's a very nice lake there. You would think there would be a trail around the lake. Oh well.

When we got back to camp it was feeding time. That's really a theme if you know me. Go do something super active, then go back to camp and cook/eat/drink beer for the rest of the day. Also, there was an apple butter festival going on at the park we camped at, so we bought so fresh, right off the wood fire, apple butter. And it was amazing.

Sunday was kayak day. It was cloudy all day and I was praying the rain would just blow over. There was a pretty good chance of scattered thunderstorms all weekend and when we missed out Saturday I felt it was coming. We did get a short little sprinkle at one point, but for the most part it stayed clear while we were on the water.

So Deep Creek Lake is huge. We had thought about paddling all the way to the state park so we could park and enjoy the beach, but it ended up being too far. I knew at one point if we went all the way there the paddle back to the marina would have been awful.

We did roughly 6-7 miles, which is less than what we did in Virginia, but this was also with no current helping move us along. If you stopped paddling you just sat there. Also, it's a popular boating lake so we were competing with large boats with motors, which create big waves. That really doesn't help you move productively. So it was a pretty hard day on the water. Fun, but I was ready to be back when we were done.