Hiking and drinking wine!

Yesterday we headed to Maryland for sugarloaves... Sugarloaf Mountain and the vineyard next door. Sugarloaf is a small mountain about 40 minutes from D.C. You'd think that on such a sunny, but not too hot, day, the trails would have been crowded. No so. We were surprised at how few people there were. We hiked the blue blazed trail around to the White Rocks (which is the view in the photo). There are some hills and the trail is a little over five miles long. It was a very pleasant hike. In summer it's mostly shaded by trees. There are lots of bugs and critters and birds. I wore my new hiking boots (and new hiking socks and new hiking shorts) to start breaking them in, in preparation for our Kilimanjaro trek.

After our hike we traded our boots for flip-flops and stopped at the Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyard. They have tastings with cheese plate snacks. We tasted all six wines and had some delicious cheese from a local goat farm. We ended up buying two bottles of wine and they wrapped up the rest of our goat cheese to bring home. It was a great way to end our excursion.

Sugarloaf Mountain and the vineyard are just off of I-270 at the Hyattstown exit. The mountain is on private property and there's no admission fee. Tastings at the vineyard are between $2 and $4 and cheese prices vary.

More mountain pics at flickr.