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!