What a perfect Saturday, all late-summer blue skies and cool morning air, I spent the morning in a car, but the rest of the day was out in it. R. drove up the hill to fetch N. and me and then we headed out for a hike at Oregon Ridge State Park. Now, I’ve hiked around this park at least a dozen times, all four seasons, with lots of different parts of my Baltimore. It’s like my Gwynns-Falls-Trail-Out-to-Middle-Branch-Park bike ride suggestion, but in a car–always a sure win, because it is just plain perfect out here. We parked the car, did a quick tour of the Nature Center, and after a few assorted hiccups (did you really lock the car?) we were on our way into the park. I’d been here before, and so had R. Sure, N. couldn’t find her way out of a paper bag without a GPS, but hey, with two of us having cocky senses of direction, what could go wrong? Turns out, nothing. We predictably got lost and spent over four hours traipsing through mud and leaves and ferns and spider webs and our fears of snakes, and I saw so much park I’d never seen before, and nobody cared much that we were lost, because this was all we had on our calendars for this Saturday in September. But then it was time to be out and eating and rehydrating, so we found our way out to all of those things, and I was happy to be off my feet. We drove home and I grabbed my bike for a ride over to Butcher’s Hill for a night of dog-sitting and cable tv-watching with N.. I felt the long afternoon walk as I climbed up Baltimore Street and was happy to get to the top and take my left, where I stopped to snap this picture of a beautiful brick building all overgrown with summertime still. Up top there are two stacks I recognized immediately–beehives buzzing with bees probably gathering their last-of-the-season pollen from those flowers blooming on the gates. On Saturday, everything felt pretty beautiful.