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Pastimes : NNBM - SI Branch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (49125)	1/11/2006 10:02:45 AM
From: Crocodile	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 104216

unfortunately, we run into it more often than we'd like. we try not to feel too intolerant as it's usually families out hiking with their kids -- more often two or three families out together. we have a tactic that we employ when hiking trails in the more popular parks, and that is to hike the trail backwards -- usually the more difficult route as trails are generally laid out so that the regular direction has the more easy climbs and faster descents. very few people hike the reverse, so if we do encounter a noisy group, we are soon past and won't see (or hear) them again. however, once this summer, we hiked a popular trail going in the normal direction. and a couple of families overtook us while we were stopped for lunch. we ended up being ahead of them, but then their kids came running past and got very far ahead. the parents started shouting for them, and then the kids shouted back, and then they all tore back by, then came back again awhile later, and more shouting, etc... it was actually very bizarre. we ended up sitting on a log waiting for the parents to get ahead of us and then we hiked slowly and gave them plenty of time to move on. granted, that was one of the less common encounters. we've seen this most with people who seem to be from cities and have kids that are "too cool" to be out hiking. the kids don't want to be there and they make that pretty obvious. i don't know what the answer is, except maybe to get kids out into the forests at a younger age. also, when i've done field work with high school kids, i often find the first hour or so is sort of stressful (for me) as they arrive very hyper. However, after a couple of hours, they usually mellow out and are a lot quieter and easier to work with. getting some of them out along a river or into a forest seems to make them go wild for a little while -- reminds me of when you let horses out of the barn after they've been cooped up for a few days in bad weather -- they go out and immediately tear around, bucking and kicking for about 10 minutes before they settle down. sometimes, i don't think humans are much different than all of the other animals. (o: as for hiking in quiet places, the best strategy for us has been to pick places where the trails are long and difficult. those trails are usually very quiet and often afford more opportunity to see wildlife. the other places that people rarely go are on wetland trails - which is odd because those are also some of the best places for wildlife observation. we save our hikes in the more popular parks until they're closed for camping in late fall, winter, or early spring. We often find that we have the park to ourselves at those times. ~croc