Yesterday I was in the mood to go somewhere other than in the neighborhood for my morning walk. When I said I was thinking about going out to Green Valley, I hadn't been out there since the first part of August, Hubby Dearest asked if he could go along. I said, "Of course, but I'm thinking about walking some new trails and I'm not sure you will want to do that". He surprised me by saying that was fine, he just wanted to walk with me. In other words he was okay with walking slower than usual.
So we both took our cameras and walking poles. I drove past the park ranger's house, past the entrance to the main part of the park, on down the road past private residences and farm fields, until the road curved to the north and ended in a parking lot.
In front of us was this causeway which crosses the far north end of Green Valley Lake - the area where the Platte River once flowed until it was dammed to form the lake. I can't find specific dates for when that was, but my earliest memories of it are from the late 1950's, early 1960's.
My next photo was of sunlight creating sparkles in the lake foam and the algae buildup on one of the steel culverts.
Bud spotted something white in the distance, "What's that?"
My zoom lens confirmed that it was the bleached root of a dead tree.
There were some indecipherable, to us, blue marks on some of the limestone and on the surface of this little pool.
Is it from farm chemical surface runoff as we suspect?
Regardless of the cause or source, it made for what I thought were some interesting photos.
And here I am, ready to start up the first path we came to.
This was a nice, moderate incline - enough to get my heart rate up for sure.
HD is looking for birds to photograph. There was surprising little in the way of birds, butterflies or dragonflies to see and no birdsong to be heard. We did scare off a large bird that flew away to quickly for identity, but I thought it was a hawk.
This trail dead-ended at the top with a soybean field to the north and cedar trees to the south.
I took this shot on the way back down. I wish I were capable of describing the amazing scents along this trail. I never could identify any particular trees, weeds, flowers or other woodsy growth that would account for the sweet smell.
Back at the bottom of this first trail, a second path branched off south, southwest, nearer the west shoreline.
The first thing I found interesting enough for a picture was this feather still misted by the morning dew.
We made it to, and across, the second causeway - the one seen across the lake in that first photo from a year ago.
The path continued on from here but we did not. It was starting to get hot, I was getting tired. Bud reckoned that by the time we got back to the car we would have gone more than a mile in something more than an hour.
Enough for this day, but I want to go back again and go further down this trail.
Which came first? The ivy killed the tree? Or the tree died and the ivy grew on it?
Either way, I found the stark beauty arresting.
I was disappointed about not getting photos of any butterflies or birds, nor of the one dragonfly I saw.
These are the only treasures we found. The three black feathers were all in the same area. The smaller gray one was farther along the trail.
The limestone rocks, the large one with some blue ??? on it and the small ones with some traces of fossils as well as the fishing lures were all picked up on that last causeway.
Back home Bud downloaded the information from his Garmin Fitness and GPS watch onto his laptop.
We walked 1.56 mile in one hour six minutes - which includes stopping for pictures.
Looking at this photo I'm thinking that trail must go all the way around the lake. Next time I'm going to try and find the beginning of this west side trail from the south end and start hiking from there. Perhaps someday we will cover all the west side corridor.
Oh, happy trails to us. 😎💕
No comments:
Post a Comment