I've been picking my through the Landscapes thread, and some of y'all are amazing photographers living in and traveling to some amazing places. I searched to see if there was some sort of outdoor activities thread and didn't locate one, so I'd thought I'd throw one up.

This is a thread to share our stories, pics and thoughts about the things we do outside. Here is the place for your stories about hiking camping, the weird things you find and the memories and friends you make along the trail. Hunt or fish? Show off your successes or tell us about the one that got away. Mountain bike, rock climb, paddle? Let's hear about your best moments or see your favorite places. Skiers, snowboarders and surfers, get in on the fun.

And don't think this thread is only for the folks who get out in "Nature" (whatever that is). Bike, or run, or walk around your town? Show us what you see. There is wonder and beauty and humanity everywhere. All my skater kids; I wanna see what you got.

Cheers y'all!

Go!

I fly fish. It has been a pastime, a passion, an obsession, and an escape from the noise of the world and the noise in my head. I have no doubt that fly fishing kept me alive through some of the darkest moments of my life. It taught me to fail with grace and compassion for my own limits. It has provided me the peace and space to work through the turmoil I've always carried around in my mind. I was fly fishing when I put together the pieces of my experience and realized a truth about myself that has revolutionized my life, and I was fly fishing when I finally found the tranquility and strength in myself to accept and live that truth without flinching.

I thought this was a thread about the film The Great Outdoors, and got really excited. Carry on everyone!

LOTS. I hike and climb, drive in mountain roads, ride off road (mountain and motorbike), explore caves and abandoned mines, dive (sea and caves too),... and travel.
I LOVE nature and try to escape from the city as much as I can.
P.S: This has been my last year:
https://viviendoapesardelacrisis.blogspot.com/2019/10/resumen-de-fotos-del-2019.html


Nice fishes!

I don't do much beyond short walks, looking at scenery and taking photos so the landscape photos thread mostly has me covered. But this thread will be good for photos with people in them to avoid breaking the rule of the other one. When travelling to different cities/towns, I like staying in reasonably central locations so walking can be my preferred method of getting around. I should make sure I have my camera on me every time I step out.

I like to mountain bike and hike and there are plenty of opportunities to do these things right on the northern edge of town where I live. Five minutes from where I live I can be on the trails, and I love it. But when I really feel adventurous and want to explore, the Owyhee Mountains are about an 80-100 minutes away, depending on where you want to go. The scenery here is spectacular. It is my favorate stomping grounds by far. Gorgeous scenery, semi-abandoned (or totally abandoned) back country mining towns, feral horses (and other exotic wildlife,) trippy rock formations, awesome trails to explore, both on bike and with a high clearance vehicle, and a camera is essential. I had posted several photos from this area on here before Photobucket nuked them all because I wouldn't pay their fucking $400.00 a year fee that they suddenly came up with. But even then, photos cant do it justice.

There is a place out there where you can find those spherical grapefruit rocks where you cut them open and there is blue agate inside them; I have several that I've found and cut open from there. You will sometimes find petrified wood- large chunks of it- that can fool you because it looks like real wood. And occasionally you'll fine really weird stuff- volcanic glass, and weird crystallized calcium carbonate deposits that mimic manmade glass. All kinds of trippy flowers, and one time, this huge 4 inch flourescent yellow scorpion that looked like something from, like, the African jungle or something; I almost didn't believe it was real at first until it moved its tail (luckily before I tried to pick it up.) Basically, the Owyhee Mountains are an undiscovered slice of coolness in the far eastern part of Oregon and far southwestern part of Idaho.

I'm from Northwest Germany, close to Netherlands, so obviously here the biking and hiking are modes of transportation to get from A to B, not hobbies to pursue. I don't mean that in a positive or negative way really, it's just how it is, the flatness of the land and the way most of the distances to pretty much everything are relatively short.

As for the outdoors, well, I don't really live in the city. Well I do officially live in the city, but I live so close to the edge the city limits are I think around 50 meters from this house and every time I walk the dog after a few minutes walking I'm in the countryside with farms, fields and forests. So it's just the daily routine, but I sure am glad for it. I didn't even choose it that way, when I was looking for apartments all the ones that were more inside the city said "no dogs allowed", so I got this one. Means I have to bike for 15 minutes to get anywhere near anything that looks city-ish (the outskirts are more like villages because before the city swelled up after the war and swallowed them, they litereally were villages), but the definite upside is easy access to nice and quiet countryside.

-edit- I just noticed Oxenkiller described almost exactly the same. Hah. I even live on the Northern edge of town, too.

Winter is my favorite season for trout fishing. The tourons are snug in their big city homes in the flatlands. The tube hatch is months away. The old men are tying flies and most of the serious outdoor folks are still in hunter mode. I've been hoping for good conditions for sniping a few big fish. The weather finally got right this week (read drizzly and gross, but not too much sky water at any one time), so I made a run up to Coal Country to fish a dirty little secret of a creek in the poorest county in the United States.





A little local color. There are a lot of levels of squalor out there. The normal stuff I grew up around in the network of incorporated trailer parks in my home county. Now, mountain squalor is another level, the kind that requires a multigenerational commitment to shitting where you sleep. Coal country squalor is nth degree mountain squalor. The economic and physical conditions that Americans are living under in 2020 are fucking eye opening, if you care to look.




It's definitely time for some new wading boots. I've thoroughly roached out the current pair.



There's nothing impressive about this creek on the surface. It belies the oft-stated belief of dreamy eyed fly fishing mystics that trout don't live in ugly places. This is not wild and scenic water. It's a glorified ditch cutting through an economic apocalypse zone. Due to the vagaries of geology/soil composition (the ground doesn't perc) and political economy (coal companies are and always have been bastards), it is neither possible to install septic fields, nor is there any county-wide municipal sewer system. As a consquence, most homes simply have straight pipes that flush their sewage directly to the creek. This is the only place I fish where I ALWAYS wader up.





Fly fishing for trout and fly fishing for big trout are two only somewhat related disciplines. Targeting large fish is its own separate game. It makes greater demands of anglers. We must be willing to submit ourselves to unpleasant, often borderline unsafe conditions, frequently at times that any human would prefer to be abed. The test of skill is greater. Stealth in the approach becomes more essential. Casts must be more accurate and line handling more precise. Detailed knowledge of trout feeding and holding behavior becomes more important; large trout do not behave like run of the creek fish. Most of all, it takes a psychological commitment to the likelihood of failure. Fishing deliberately for big trout means accepting that what you're probably not going to do is catch the fish you're after. This wasn't one of those trips, though. I laid them the fuck out. My biggest obstacle was finding a way to fit fish into my normal landing net when they were longer than the net bag, so I ended up dragging around a boat net for my second sesh.









Cheers y'all!

Claire

This is one of the reasons I love living in Ottawa. We are easily the greenest city of a million people you’ll ever see. City limits extends to an area 80% the size of Long Island, yet we have less than 1/8 the population. So there’s space everywhere! One of my elusive life goals is to get pictures of the flock of wild turkeys that lives right across from the General Hospital. Yeah, we’re an urban area

Got to spend some time fishing and hanging out with my cousin in my spiritual second home in the South Carolina Low Country. The fishing was outstanding and the weather was even better.























Cheers y'all!

Claire

I'm on lockdown in the suburb I grew up in. At least it can be picturesque. One photo from the other week's walk, to a lookout I've probably never been up to before:



The rest from this morning. Another path I've never been up before:



Doubted I was gonna make it to the top for a moment but I did in the end. Conveniently they've built some long sections to replace a couple of steep parts of the original path. The house I grew up in until age 18 is out of view but somewhere at the base of the hill on the left:



Horror movie vibes:

That first shot looks like a still from a movie. Beautiful!