![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
State Parks
Sep. 13th, 2020 08:38 amLast Tuesday I decided that I needed a break from writing, so I treated myself to a week’s vacation, and over the next two days hit up the gardens at the art museum and then Fort Harrison, a state park less than half an hour from my house which I have meant to visit… since I moved here four years ago…
Clearly my past self was saving it for my present starved-for-variety self without realizing it. The trails are not as challenging as I might prefer, but I managed to inject some semi-unintentional challenge when I followed a path off into a meadow, which continued to look like an intentional human-created trail as it wandered down a hillside, until abruptly it trailed off to nothing in the tall grass.
I was contemplating my chances of finding the trail if I retraced my steps (low, it seemed to me) when I heard the music of human voices up ahead, and blundered happily through the grass till I reached a creek. It was deep on my side, sandy and shallow on the other, so I took off my shoes and socks and rolled up my cargo pants and took a leap, and ended up soaked to my knees and splashed rather higher and overall extremely pleased with myself, as nothing says Adventure like leaping into a creek.
My shoes were only mildly damp, which was fortunate, as it took me some time to find my way back to the right trail… whereupon I came face to face with a deer! “Hi!” I said - the doe was really very close to me, just a few yards down the path, I could have gotten an amazing photograph - except, alas, the deer drifted off among the trees when I reached for my phone, so the photo was not to be.
Then I walked back to the parking lot and had a picnic lunch at a table tucked in among the trees, with sandwich and blueberries and an icy cold ginger beer, which made me feel like a character in Swallows and Amazons; an Osprey perhaps. (The solitary Osprey meets the Swallows on a forest adventure… and learns about the power of friendship and also how to set patterans so she doesn’t lose her trail!)
I had such a good time that I went on to look up every state park in the state (who knew there were so many!) and marked down the ones that seemed within a reasonable driving distance for a day trip. With some trouble I let go of Clifty Falls, which has four waterfalls AND a tunnel that is seasonally closed to humans for purposes of bat hibernation - a literal bat cave!!! But one can only drive so far in a day. Perhaps after the pandemic I can take an overnight trip.
Clearly my past self was saving it for my present starved-for-variety self without realizing it. The trails are not as challenging as I might prefer, but I managed to inject some semi-unintentional challenge when I followed a path off into a meadow, which continued to look like an intentional human-created trail as it wandered down a hillside, until abruptly it trailed off to nothing in the tall grass.
I was contemplating my chances of finding the trail if I retraced my steps (low, it seemed to me) when I heard the music of human voices up ahead, and blundered happily through the grass till I reached a creek. It was deep on my side, sandy and shallow on the other, so I took off my shoes and socks and rolled up my cargo pants and took a leap, and ended up soaked to my knees and splashed rather higher and overall extremely pleased with myself, as nothing says Adventure like leaping into a creek.
My shoes were only mildly damp, which was fortunate, as it took me some time to find my way back to the right trail… whereupon I came face to face with a deer! “Hi!” I said - the doe was really very close to me, just a few yards down the path, I could have gotten an amazing photograph - except, alas, the deer drifted off among the trees when I reached for my phone, so the photo was not to be.
Then I walked back to the parking lot and had a picnic lunch at a table tucked in among the trees, with sandwich and blueberries and an icy cold ginger beer, which made me feel like a character in Swallows and Amazons; an Osprey perhaps. (The solitary Osprey meets the Swallows on a forest adventure… and learns about the power of friendship and also how to set patterans so she doesn’t lose her trail!)
I had such a good time that I went on to look up every state park in the state (who knew there were so many!) and marked down the ones that seemed within a reasonable driving distance for a day trip. With some trouble I let go of Clifty Falls, which has four waterfalls AND a tunnel that is seasonally closed to humans for purposes of bat hibernation - a literal bat cave!!! But one can only drive so far in a day. Perhaps after the pandemic I can take an overnight trip.
