Shenanigans at Sharon Woods

On Saturday, June 16, the family and our honorary member, Cheryl, headed to Sharon Woods for a hike. I think we all agreed that this felt more like a "walk" instead of a "hike." If one of you disagrees, it doesn't really matter, as Ryan pointed out during the hike, seeing as this blog is only written from my perspective. So, I have all the power! Hee-hee-hee! Although, there is a place for comments, of which I don’t seem to get very many. I am going to assume that means that I am always on the mark! Huh! Power again! Even though the trail was paved and the hike had a very public park atmosphere, we still had a fun time on this 80 degree day. We walked 4.53 miles in an hour and 50 minutes.

After crossing the bridge and stopping to look at a pretty waterfall, we took a few minutes to explore the Cummins Historic Cemetery. The graves were marked with tiny white marble headstones without any writing on them. The headstones popped out of a lush ivy-like groundcover. I did some internet researching to find out how old the cemetery is, but I didn’t have any luck. I guess the park office may have more info.

The path was one of those fitness trails where it has pit stops to do a variety of exercises as you walk. This is where the shenanigans come in. At one stop, there were some parallel bars. You had to hoist your body weight off of the ground and move across them using your arm strength. Cheryl was interested in trying them, so she gave it a whirl and only hoisted herself off of the ground. She didn’t know how to get herself moving. Then, Ryan showed her how it was done. You can tell by the pictures he really knew what he was doing! Cheryl took a second try and moved a little bit, but I think because she was laughing, she didn’t get far. A big pat on the back to Cheryl and Ryan – none of the rest of us even tried!

After hiking through some wonderful shaded areas, we reached Sharon Lake. There were some pretty views. Lots of people were at the park. There were boats on the lake, including people in paddle boats. We walked around the lake and went through a cool tunnel to travel underneath the road. It was constructed as part of a stone bridge and was a pretty spot on the lake. The trail curved around the lake and passed through two big tunnels to go under the highway. These were really loud with passing cars.

This is a very nice park for the local community. If I lived nearby, I would walk it all the time for exercise. Although, it didn’t satisfy my appetite for a deep woods peaceful hike, the company was stupendous.  Thanks to Ryan, Morgan, Cheryl, and Joe for keeping me company. I’m so grateful for it!

32 hikes down and 28 to go!!!!

I will blog again soon about a couple of hikes we took at Shawnee Lookout. Not sure about hiking this weekend as the weatherman is forecasting temperatures in the hundreds…missing winter hiking!

Abundance

One thing that I have learned about the different places that we have hiked is that when the name of our destination has the words "wildlife area" in it, you are pretty much guaranteed a pretty rustic trail. This epiphany came to me during last weekend's hikes because we hiked at two extremely different places in one day. Lorrie, Joe and I started the day hiking 1.51 miles at Caesar Creek Gorge State Nature Preserve. It was a cool 66 degrees - unexpected for June. Caesar Creek Gorge was beautiful. The trails were well manicured, easy to follow and had fancy bridges and steps built all over the place. It was just on the other side of the dam at Caesar's Creek State Park where we hiked a few weeks ago. This was a welcome retreat after the mishaps on unmarked trails the last couple of hikes. Even though this was a short hike, I would return to this spot because there are so many other trails nearby that would make for a great day of hiking.

We got back in the car and drove about 15 minutes to Spring Valley Wildlife Area, and "wildlife area" it was!  The trail was nice and flat and easy to follow, but pretty rustic at times. Although it was rustic the word that foremost comes to my mind when thinking of Spring Valley is "abundance." What is the most plentiful thing that you have ever seen? A crowd in a stadium? A forest full of trees from an airplane? Blades of grass in a lawn? Multiply that vision times ten and that was what looking at Spring Valley Lake was like. To give you an idea of the size of the lake's area: the trail is about 2.75 miles around the lake . There is an abundance of lily pads that is truly unbelievable covering the entire surface of the lake, side by side and on top of each other, they were everywhere! We hiked about 2.36 miles in about an hour and 15 minutes and the temperature had risen to about 75 degrees.

There was an abundance of many other living things as well. The cattails were so thick along the boardwalk to the observation deck that you couldn't see any water. Birds are also in abundance at Spring Valley. The sign along the trail said that more than 230 birds have been recorded there. One type of bird that is most plentiful here are geese, so there was quite an abundance of goose poop. My least favorite thing at Spring Valley Lake was the abundance of bugs!  Even though we had previously sprayed ourselves, we stopped to spray again at one point because they were relentless!  Particularly annoying were the deer flies who seem to purposely fly from one ear to the other even though I was continuously moving and swatting at them. I hate those deer flies!  I would love to go back to Spring Valley when all of those lily pads are blooming. I bet it is an amazing site. There were only a few blooms here and there when we were hiking and I wondered what it would look like with all of them in bloom.

After Caesar Creek Gorge and Spring Valley...31 hikes down and 29 hikes to go. Past the halfway mark!!!!!!!  This is starting to feel achievable!

This past weekend we hiked at Sharon Woods, so I will be blogging again soon in order to catch up!

Identity Crisis

Joe and I tackled the longest hike so far over the weekend to Mounds State Recreation Area in Whitcomb, Indiana. We hiked 9.14 miles  in 5 hours and 8 minutes and the weather was amazing. I guess my post title from last week was a little premature. It sure felt like July last week and this week it was absolutely beautiful! The temperature was 62 degrees when we started and only went up to 73 degrees by the end of the hike. It was really breezy and partly cloudy. The absolute perfect day for a hike!

We started on the Wildlife Wander Trail. This trail was the easiest part of the hike. The surface was soil and it was very well cleared. There was no guesswork involved about where to go. It was a great start and I had a good feeling that it was going to be a great hike. The number of miles ahead of us was looming, but because the weather was so pretty and we were well-stocked with protein bars, I was ready to take it on! There were a bunch of shagbark hickory trees on this part of the trail. The only tree that I can really easily identify because it actually looks exactly like its name. The end of this trail was at a creek crossing that was unlike any I had seen before - large concrete pillars across the creek. We crossed one of the park roads and headed to the Templeton Creek Trailhead.
 
The Templeton Creek Trail surface changed drastically compared to the Wildlife Wander Trail. What was not so perfect was it's unpredictability. It had a serious identity crisis! The trail surface changed more often than a traffic light changes colors (that might be a slight exaggeration...)  Thankfully we had asked for a map when we paid our entrance fee into the park, so we were able to keep our bearings to some degree. Some of the trail was soil, some of it was mowed, and some of it was completely covered over with weeds and was almost impossible to follow.  The funny thing was we would only be hiking a couple of minutes on one surface and then it would change again. It was pretty frustrating at times considering the trails did not have many signs or markers of any other kind.

We persevered and finally reached a clearing where there were several trail signs.  I reached into my pocket for the trail map to identify where we were on the map and it was gone. It had fallen out of my pocket when we were trying to negotiate the trail. Yikes! We had only traveled around 2 miles at this point, so we still had a long way to go. Although Joe and I were grateful for the nice park map (easy portability compared to the book), when we left the car I made a last minute decision to put the 60 Hikes book in my pack - this was a very good thing. We sat down in the grass, got the book out and were able to figure out exactly where we were.  Realizing we were just a short walk from a picnic area, we picked up and headed down to it to study the book and its map and to eat our lunch.

Rested and feeling familiar with where we were headed, we set off for the Long Loop and Short Loop Trails as well as the Glidewell Indian Mounds. As we traveled along the soil trail, the weeds got taller and taller until they were taller than us. We were excited to get to the mounds, but it was very anticlimactic as we would not have known we were looking at them except there was a sign nearby. Crazy grassy weeds were all over the place and it was hard to get a sense of exactly where the mounds started and ended. We continued on this trail and started to see lake views of Brookville Lake. Since the temperature was so nice and we had plenty of water and protein bars, we decided to go with the Long Loop Trail instead of the Short Loop Trail. This was both good and bad. What was great about it was that the trail eventually wound its way all the way down to the lake and we were hiking on a trail along the shore. It was beautiful. The not so great part about it was that we eventually hit a spot in the trail where the weeds were so thick and so tall there was absolutely no way to tell where the trail was anymore and there was no where to step. Sadly, we had to turn around. It was a long haul back because we had almost completed the Long Loop, however, because hiking along the lake was by far the prettiest part of this hike, the unfortunate mishap turned out in our favor.

At this point, we were pretty sick of the weeds and the unmarked trails. We decided to hike along the road and then pick up the Wildlife Wander Trail from there to get back to the car. This was a nice change of pace for us. We had now traveled a little over 7 miles and our feet were starting to hurt.  We hiked about two more miles and were glad to reach the car.  Joe and I both said that we weren't sure if we would hike these trails again. Had they been cleared, it would be a definite yes for me, but the distance we had to drive and the aggravation of the overly bushy trails causes me to give these trails a thumbs down at this time.

29 hikes down and 31 to go!!!! About to hit the half-way point and I am really excited about that!!!!  Two hikes this weekend: Ceasar Creek Gorge and Spring Valley Wildlife Area. Both hikes are easy, so if you've been thinking about stepping out with us, this might be the weekend for you!!! Send me a message and join in.