On Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, we went camping at Jackson-Washington State Forest. We’ve been camping there before and in fact, is where we got engaged.

After we arrived, we set up camp. It was late afternoon, and this place was a lot busier than we had ever seen it. Not surprising, since it was a holiday weekend, but there were tons of campers (unusual) and a lot of loud dogs and kids. A lot of the kids were riding bikes around the parking lot, which was good to see, but they weren’t being very safe about it.

Our tent (the camper is our neighbors)

My hiking boots (photo inspired in part by Mr Macrum’s “Leather Friends” post)

After we pitched the tent, we decided to go for a hike on one of the shorter/easier trails. I think the trail we did was trail 6, about two miles long. We walked to the trailhead.

 
They drained the lake for … well, some reason

Bridge

There was something in the air, a mystical atmosphere from being back in the lush forest with the sun low in the sky, light filtering through the trees.

Glowing leaves

The fog is really lens flare from a cheap filter, but it turned out to be a nice atmospheric shot

Me

The trail was fairly flat and wound through the woods gently. It wasn’t a difficult hike, but it was great to be outdoors together and enjoying the scenery.

Ferns

Soon, we came to a clearing. This was an interpretive trail and we had a pamphlet describing some of the features, but after reading a couple of things we simply ignored it. Most of what we read wasn’t too interesting. We did look up the explanation of the clearing, and apparently they do some testing with cross-pollinating various species of certain trees here.


Clearing

Rays of light

Rob, looking very dramatic

Tree, moss, groundcover

After a while, we came to a lake, the name of which I can’t remember. The sun was reflecting off the water, at times it was a bit blinding but overall we had a stunning view of the lake. As soon as Rob saw the lake, he ran down the steep hill and jumped in the water. He ran back up immediately, and of course got us wet.

Lake

I spent more time looking at Sarah though … she was flattering the light.


Sarah

Us … the focus isn’t how I intended but it ended up being an interesting shot.

The trail took us across a boardwalk for a while, which I tend to have mixed feelings about. I prefer more natural trails, but on the other hand the boardwalk lets you walk across a wetland. In this case, it was very cool.

Boardwalk

Hills, lake, marsh

Rob and me

Before long, we came across the remains of a house or some other building. The trail went right through it. The walls had partially crumbled, and parts of what remained were covered in thick moss and vines. This added to the mystical atmosphere that the whole hike had, and we spent a few minutes here taking photographs. None of them really seem to do it justice.

Mossy wall

Sarah

There was a staircase leading us out through the other side of the house.

Stairs

As we continued hiking, we saw remains of other houses, none as cool as what we had just seen, but interesting nonetheless. An entire chimney still stands where the rest of one house is mostly gone.
 

Chimney

The trail ended shortly after this, and it was getting fairly dark. We should really do more hikes late in the day like this one, it was truly fantastic. We really enjoyed this trail, as it had a variety of scenery, especially for such a short trail.

Returning to the campground

We got back to the campground and found it was still pretty noisy, maybe moreso. The campground at Jackson-Washington State Forest has “primitive” campsites (no electricity). Normally, this keeps things quiet, but in this case a number of people had turned on generators attached to their campers! I was pretty stunned at this, and it was pretty annoying to have what is normally such a quiet, peaceful event punctuated by generators, but we were able to tune them out pretty well after a while.

I built a fire, which always seems to take longer than I think it’s going to take, and we cooked burgers over the fire. They turned out pretty well, and we had a great evening being together, eating burgers and s’mores, and generally goofing around.

Some goodies

Cooking burgers

Sarah

Tending the fire
 
The next morning, I went for a bicycle ride, which I’ve already written about here. After that, we went canoing at Starve Hollow Lake. We took Rob, as we’ve done in the past, and we all enjoyed ourselves. Rob kept shifting his weight, making it difficult for us to keep the boat steady. Eventually he laid down. He is so lazy! We got a good, close look at a Great Blue Heron and saw some other wildlife as well. A great end to a wonderful trip. Here are a few photos from our canoing outing.

Hills

Great Blue Heron

Lilly pads

Me

Rob, lounging

First of all, it’s Sarah’s birthday today! She is 23 years old. Head over to her blog and wish her a happy birthday.

July was a pretty good month for me cycling-wise — I rode a total of 425.19 miles, the most I’ve ridden in any month so far. The funny thing is, it didn’t even feel like I rode that much. However, I did do my longest ride to date (56.6 miles), which took me through Morgan-Monroe State Forest and Mahalasville. I only went mountain biking once on singletrack trail (18 miles), and once on the Bloomington Rail-Trail with Sarah and my family.

Also, Sarah and I did a lot of camping, hiking, and canoeing in July. This cut into cycling somewhat, but it’s great to do more things outdoors that we both enjoy (we went cycling a couple of times together, too), and those things can exercise different muscles and more importantly, result in a wide variety of exciting experiences. I also posted 214 photos to Flickr.

In August, Sarah and I are going on vacation to the Smokies and North Carolina. We hope to do more hiking, camping, and canoeing, visit one of my best friends from college, go white water rafting, mine rubies, stay in a cabin with a mountain view, go mountain biking in real mountains, ride part of the Blue Ridge Parkway, see more waterfalls, watch the sun rise, get lost (getting found is optional), take a few thousand photos, and fall even more deeply in love than we are now (it never seems possible, but it keeps happening).

Hiking (part of) the Tecumseh Trail

Sunday was a very busy day for us. It started with a hike with my mountain biking buddy Dave at Yellowwood State Forest. Dave has done a ton of hiking, especially in this area, and even wrote a hiking guide that covers many local trails — but this was the first time I had hiked with him. We had planned this hike last week — Sarah and I wanted to pick his brain about our trip to the Smokies and North Carolina, and Dave has been down there probably 30 times, so he is full of great information.

We met by Prange (some spell it “Prang”) Pond, which is just off Dubois Ridge Road (which is just off Lanam Ridge Road, where Dave and I have ridden on the road a few times). It’s fairly out of the way and in the outskirts of Yellowwood, so it doesn’t see a lot of traffic. We hiked part of the Tecumseh Trail, which is a huge, 42-mile trail that goes from Martinsville all the way to part of Lake Monroe that’s in Brown County. We only hiked about three miles of it.

Prange pond; a scene on the Tecumseh Trail

It was a really cool hike, with some hills, but none were too hard. Dave is a fountain of knowledge and pointed out some sassafras, an old well, and some very valuable trees (not having any branches until about 3/4 of the way up). It was an interesting hike because it wasn’t just a linear section of trail — we hiked on the Tecumseh Trail, a horse trail, some logging roads, and a gravel road, creating a pretty cool loop. We were glad to have Dave as our guide, because it would have been easy to get lost.

Dave hiking; a huge spider

The trail was pretty overgrown in some sections; we wished we hadn’t worn shorts. I’m not sure I have any pants that are well-suited for hiking.

Sarah, Dave, and the dogs; pines leading to a clearing

I was really glad that Sarah and Dave got to know each other a bit. I have spent quite a bit of time mountain biking with Dave, and told her a lot of stories, and conveyed a lot of things Dave told me to her. But this was the first time they spent any significant amount of time together, and I thought that was pretty cool.

The pond with some cattails, and some wildflowers

Dave brought his dogs (we left Rob at home), and they were good. It was fun having them with us. Maybe next time, we’ll bring Rob. Rory, one of Dave’s dogs, went for a swim in the pond when we got back, ending up a disgusting mess — exactly how dogs love to be.

The Abandoned Homestead Hike

Sunday afternoon, we talked about how much we enjoyed the earlier hike and decided to go for another one. We picked a couple of possibilities from Dave’s hiking guide, and ended up doing the Abandoned Homestead Hike, which is near the Ransburg Boy Scouts Reservation near Lake Monroe. The defining characteristic of this hike (aside from the abandoned homestead) was the lack of a trail. A few parts had a proper trail, but it was either overgrown or nonexistent for much of the time. After a false start that took us down near the lake, we went back to a different trailhead.

When you go the wrong way and see something like this, you begin to question whether it was indeed the wrong way to go.
We saw a guy on his way out as we were going in, and asked if we were heading the right way. He said we were, and that there was a baby vulture in the attic of the homestead. He said it was making a horrible shrieking sound.

Glad to have some assurance that we were on the right track, we continued hiking. We basically had to find our own way much of the time, due to the lack of a trail. That gave this hike an interesting challenge. It was a really pretty area, and we were hiking along a ridgetop. However, there was a lot of noise from boats on the lake that was pretty distracting. It detracted from the feeling of being out in the middle of nowhere. It was enjoyable nonetheless.

Part of the “trail;” Sarah and me

Just when we were beginning to wonder where this homestead was, Sarah spotted it. We had to maneuver over a tricky area to get to it. It was a rickety old house — although as Sarah pointed out, it couldn’t have been too old because it had electricity. We saw no other clues to help date it, but we did wonder how somebody picked that spot to build a home, and how they got the materials there. We saw no evidence of any vultures, babies or otherwise, but we weren’t about to try looking upstairs.

The abandoned homestead

Wondering when the thing will collapse; a view of the inside

A chair sitting behind the homestead; the side of the building

Meadow

We hiked a bit further and found ourselves heading down a big hill. We ended up back where we had started hiking before at what we thought was the wrong trailhead. It wasn’t the one we were looking for, but it was just another part of the same trail. We turned around and headed back, having some more trouble finding the trail on our way back.

Nighttime Canoeing on Lake Griffy

Sarah had signed us up for a nighttime canoeing event on Lake Griffy, so after eating some dinner, we headed over there. There was a limited number of boats, and I think they chose a good limit — there was enough space that nobody was interfering with anyone else’s enjoyment of it. A man and his son were in the boat ahead of us, and as they were backing up away from the boat ramp, the man looked back to check on his wife and daughter, who were in the canoe ahead of them, and their canoe capsized right there by the shore. The guy was really embarrassed, and his son was pretty scared, but nobody was hurt. The guy did lose a sandal. He turned the canoe upright, but it was filled with water. I helped dump the water out of the canoe and turn it back over. They headed out. I felt his son was being pretty brave, not complaining and giving it another shot. We were next, and nervous after seeing that, but we didn’t have any problems.

The night paddle was timed such that we got to see the sun set over the lake, and also paddle some in the dark. It was an incredible experience. It was a beautiful sunset to begin with, but the way it reflected off the water was truly magical.

Sunset, and a paddle. No pixels were harmed in the making of these photos. No effects were used. “Sunset” scene mode was used, however.

Looking at the above shot, I can still feel us gliding over the surface of the lake, even without paddling, and hear the water dripping off of our paddles and falling in the water.

Sarah and me

We spent most of our time in the middle of the lake and in a small cove, hidden away from everyone else. We saw a Great Blue Heron standing in the water majestically, who later took flight and swooped to a different area. We saw another one fly overhead a few minutes later. There were geese over near the dam — they didn’t seem to notice our presence at all. Then again, we mostly sat awestruck and silent.

The lake is liquid gold

Clever portrait of the two of us taken by Sarah

Pastel sky

The array of colors was impressive, from blues at first to oranges, pastel purple and later deep reds.

Sarah, silhouetted, with some geese in the distance

As we sat in our cove, with darkness falling, we started to see bats flying around, sometimes swooping down to catch a meal on the surface of the water. We heard something swimming not too far from us, and I turned on my flashlight to see if we could figure out what it was. Sarah guessed it was a muskrat, but we didn’t get a good look. We also heard some unidentified creature jump into the water, making a splash and startling us. We didn’t get a good look at that one, either.

Impressionist pastels

We paddled back without turning on our flashlight. The air was beautiful and hushed and our eyes adjusted to the light. It’s surprising how much you can see if you’ll just let your eyes adjust. The moon was glowing behind some clouds, not providing much light, but adding to the atmosphere. We paddled back to the boat ramp, wishing we had more time — more time to paddle on the lake, and more time in our weekend, which was quickly coming to a close. But we felt satisfied that we had made the most of it and spent every possible moment together, outdoors, at one with each other, and with nature.