Hiking in the Blue Hills

We went hiking this weekend in the Blue Hills, the most popular of the Boston-area hiking spots.  It actually may be the biggest of the three major state parks within the I-95 inner Boston loop.  The other two are: Middlesex Fells and Lynn Woods.  We had a chance to stop by Middlesex Fells last semester for some quick biking, but haven’t made it up to Lynn Woods yet.  Here’s a quick visual for those of you not familiar with metro Boston:

The park was beautiful, but it definitely has that “extremely-crowded extremely-quickly” vibe to it.  While this weekend was still a touch chilly, we ended up running into a bunch of hikers on the trail and met another 40+ people (+ kids and dogs) milling around the watchtower at the top of the mountain.  I can only imagine how crowded it gets here in prime weather!  That’s one of the recurring themes I’ve noticed with our local NE outdoors adventures… there are just so many people everywhere!  (I guess it’s kind of like growing up with beaches on the Jersey shore — if you don’t know differently, you’d never imagine places — like SC and FL and TX — where white sandy beaches stretch lazily on for miles with few people marring the landscape…)

Anyway, here are a few photos from the top:

Tower at Top of Blue Hills

Metro Boston in the Distance

View from the Top