Hiking trip one: more like walking with a really nice view

I've finally gotten tired of vegetating for weeks, so I've decided to explore the Garden State. For someone who's been living here for about fifteen years, I know very little of it. I'm an inside kind of person, and for a long time, I didn't have a car. Never saw the point of the expense when public transportation in the area has always been reliable. Or, "reliable". At least there is public transportation.

Anyway, talking to my brother inspired me, so last weekend I explored one of the parks running along the Hudson River with my friend Chris. We didn't venture far away from people, and we walked basically in a straight line, but there was a lot of nature. And non-city smells, like water, trees, earth, and flowers. And mosquitoes, which were less nice, but I suppose they enhanced the afternoon.

A bridge leading to New York, which I should probably know, but I didn't check Google maps. I want to say George Washington Bridge, though. It's fairly close to where we visited.

Owning a smartphone turns anyone into a half-way decent photographer, so I took a snapshot of everything that looked nice until it got too annoying to interrupt the "hike" to make sure I had pictures to remember the hike later. Here are some of my favorite views:

Don't remember much about this except thinking "these leaves are really green". I told Chris that there should be an app to help city people like me identify plants from pictures along, and he suggested that we develop one. Except neither of us knows anything about plants, and only he knows anything about software, hardware, or anything that might useful for such an endeavor.

As an aside, lying on my couch writing for two months has destroyed my fitness. This hike wasn't particularly steep, and it took maybe fifteen minutes to climb, but by this point I was huffing and puffing like a COPD patient. Not cool, self. Is running on the treadmill really that different than walking outside?

I got to see this one with brother first, and he said that if it was a little bigger, he'd have mistaken it for. . . something about a machine gun. As a writer, I should have noted what he meant there because it would be useful to know. To put it mildly. Then my brother and I wondered if there were machine guns back during the Revolutionary War, since some battles happened along the river. I theorized that probably not, then resolved to ask a friend of mine who's a military history buff about it. I have to keep that in mind for the next email I send him. He'd probably know what kind of tree had "really green" leaves above. Anyway, I think this is actually a bird house.

One of the reasons I decided to go out more is that I find it difficult to write descriptions in my stories when all I see is my living room wall, the hospital walls, and my bedroom wall. Seeing all the beautiful landscapes on this baby hike helped me feel floaty and dreamy, but unfortunately, I don't have the vocabulary to describe nature. That can come with study, though.

Anyway, blogger is acting up. I will try to add more nice pictures later.