Another Round at Beaman Park

Thanks, everyone, for you comments on the blog layout on Blogger.  The comments were all positive and very helpful.  As you might expect, Gene had a few comments of his own.  They were positive, as well.  Bless his heart, he’s had to endure my thinking out loud throughout this process.  I’m still fiddling around with it, but unless I have a major shift in thinking, I expect I’ll be moving to Blogger.  By the way, I’ve posted this story to the Blue Roads to Hiking Trails page also.

We were looking for a short hike somewhere nearby for this morning.  We chose Beaman Park again.  We parked at the lower parking lot and did the Creekside Trail loop.  Off of the loop along the banks of Henry Creek is a 0.6 mile side trail which leads to the Nature/Visitor Center.  We went over there hoping to see some nice fall colors from the boardwalk.  The leaves are definitely changing, but we’re not there yet.

We back tracked to return to the Creekside trail and then continued our loop.  When we got to the Ridgetop trail we were feeling pretty good and it wasn’t even eleven o’clock yet so we added another short 1-mile loop.  That gave us a total of 4.2 miles for today with two hills to climb--just what we needed.

I had pulled something in my knee on Friday at Mammoth Cave as I stepped up on a rock.  That’s been giving me fits all weekend, but I was very pleased today that whatever I did seems to have healed itself.  My knee felt good today as long as I didn’t try to make a crazy step.

The asters and goldenrod are still hanging on, but there’s not much else out there in the line of wildflowers.  The only other thing we saw was hearts-a-bursting which is very common around here and turtlehead which is not so common.  We keep a rough log in the flower book of what we see.  The last time we saw turtlehead was in 2006 on the trail to Zealand Hut in the White Mountains.

We saw one snake, but he was small enough to have been a worm.  Definitely a snake, though.  I thought he was dead since he was on his back with an orange belly to the sun, but when I started to move the leaves around, his tail swished around.  I still think he was all but dead.  What self-respecting snake lies on its back?

Gene is happy to report that the motor home and the car are both waxed.  I’m here to say they look mighty fine.  He’ll be cleaning his basement storage compartments next.  I think I’m done inside.  Gene really helped me out on Saturday by taking all the light fixture covers off and washing them.

I think that’s all I know for today.  Thanks for tagging along.