The original plan was to go camping. Embarrassingly, we still have not gone camping since moving here. We spent all spring house shopping on the weekends and summer is too hot to be pleasurable. We had about a 2 week window after soccer ended before it got cold, and we missed it by not proactively planning, and by the time we found a free weekend it was too cold at night to make it worth doing. However, unlike in California where it takes forever to get anywhere outside of civilization, here we can get their with a short drive. 45 miles away is a good sized lake created by a damming of the Salt River. I wanted to check ot out as a possible place for boating. It's narrow and winding with steep shores, so I've read the winds can be flukey. It's primarily a house boat/ fishing lake, but it will liekly still be worth a trip every now and then.
We drove there and did a little hiking through the forest.
That is the fruit of an Osage Orange tree, also called a hedge apple. There is one in the parking lot next to us that has been dropping them and they have been rolling into the road. The ones we found in the forest were nearly twice the diameter. These were brain sized and they sort of look like brains.
We wandered down to the waters edge as well. It's lined with stepping stone sized limestone and shale that is loaded with fossilized small shells. There are evidently clams of some sort there as well. I haven't been able to find any info online about them, but there were shells scattered along the shore.
When we were leaving we walked under a flock of buzzards circling overhead. I have never seen so many large birds in one area before.
1 comment:
Nice hike.
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