Christmas Day Hike & Dinner with James River Hikers 12/25

The Christmas morning started with the visit to Riverview Cemetery. Seeing all those tombstones around always make me a little uneasy and more humble. But about that some time later. So the group met at the far corner of Cemetery and around 9 am we started our hike following our hike leader. It was a good day for December last week.Our first stop was after a mile just before Belle isle. We passed through the pedestrian bridge, which i always thought as the coolest thing in Richmond

The morning was sunny but the ice sleets were still basking in glory

The James river was overflowing, and as per David it was 10" above the mark.

At the end of Buttermilk trail, near Reedy creek, we found a nice spot and took this group photo

Then we moved on to Buttermilk heights trail.

 which was more rocky than the name buttermilk.

 Yes, we went under some trees too.

 After the Heights trail, we reached Boulevard Bridge, where we had the apple throwing contest

 And moved on to the pump house

 Moving on to the northbank trail we found overflowing James river flooding the trails

 It was a good location for the picture, but with so many people its always tough to get the location :)

 But still the photographer captured this

 Moving on to the Northbank trail we found some interesting graffitis on the wall

 ans some nice scenery

 and old structures, on their last legs

 Before the last leg of our trek, we had to cross train tracks to avoid flooded trails.

 But you cannot avoid everything, right. So this swamp was our final obstacle.

And then after 4 hours hike we reached back at the Riverview Cemetery,  where we took the final picture for LADS. :)

The evening with the same group was even better, with food of the world on the table.

 and desserts too.

 It was really amazing eating some delicious food and chatting up with different people from different places.

A really good Christmas !!!