Full Moon Hike in Wissahickon Valley Park

I did a night hike under the super blue blood moon! On Wednesday, January 31, the Wissahickon Environmental Center hosted a full moon hike from 8-9:30 pm. It was really more like a walk than a hike, about 1 ½ miles at a leisurely pace, a little bit of uphill but not steep and overall mostly flat. We walked for about 45 minutes. We could have done a longer route, but our tour leaders opted for the shorter one as the evening temperature was 31 degrees. The relaxed pace made it easy to walk and gaze at the moon and to stop and grab pictures. There wouldn’t have been time to set up my tripod and get shots with my DSLR camera which is what really needed to be done, but a slight sense of community was forged in the collective attempt to get our iPhones to focus.

Philadelphia: the City of Ghostly Love

I was on my way to Philadelphia’s Triumph Brewing Company to meet with my boss, Joe Wojie of Grim Philly Twilight Tours, and Laurie Hull, a paranormal investigator from Tri County Paranormal. We were going to discuss and map out the route to our Halloween tour, a hands-on historical ghost hunt. I had been waiting at my South Philly bus stop for over 40 minutes, alone. An older man, tall and skeletal, inappropriately dressed for the sweltering summer day in a bright red sweatshirt and winter beanie, chain smoked across the street and stared at me through his large, eighties-style sunglasses. Definitely a serial killer. I work as a guide for Grim Philly’s walking tours which feature the darker, seedier side of the city’s history. I’m an expert now on colonial prostitution, mass graves, eighteenth century diseases and their macabre treatments, and yes, serial killers. It makes for nervous travel on public transit. Fortunately, it appeared he was only interested in watching me, not following me, so I boarded my bus and made it to Triumph without incident.