I took today as a vacation day, thinking a month or two ago when I was forced to select vacation time that it would be cool enough for a nice hike today. As it turned out, it was quite warm, getting into the mid-80s with sunshine most of the day. The three of us (me, wife, and beagle) took off for a conservation area (Tuttle Clarkson) in a neighboring county that we have passed by many times, but never stopped at.
There is little detailed information and no trail maps available on the their web site about their facilties, so I emailed them a couple of weeks ago and asked about trail maps and they sent me trail maps of all their facilities in the mail. It has only a short trail segment (less then 3/4 of a mile IIRC), so it was not real high on my list of places to hike, but it was getting warm and the beagle does not deal with the heat real well, so I figured it might be a good place to try today.
It was not a bad, if short hike. Mostly a grass path through the fields and marshy areas, along with some boardwalks and a lot of pretty rustic grass/dirt paths that have not seen a lawn mower in quite a while. They seem quite proud of the fields of weeds they have planted. :)
I did not bother to show the route we took on the trail map. We just followed the path from the parking lot, past the outhouse, and then to the loop.
[added 10-14-10] In case you are curious, I made the JPG of the trail map by scanning the brochure they emailed me into a PDF file, then using the snapshot tool in Adobe Acrobat reader to capture the trail map part of the brochure, pasted it into Irfanview, and then saved it as a JGP. I did the same for the other brochures they sent me, for future use.
When we got there, the lawn mower was in use. You can see the toilet facilities in the background. The picnic area is just to the right of the sign. Just a corner is visible in this picture.
I thought maybe there was something in the mailbox. Trail maps, poop bags, something. But it was empty except for a couple of earwigs.
The path starts out like this. It had just been mowed.
A bench where the trail loop starts. We went to the right.
The first boardwalk. The mowing stopped here.
There are a series of signs along the trail, describing the different areas. This one describes where the oak trees meet the sedges. The signs are actually pretty good reading.
The rest of the trail looks like this. They probably only mow it once or twice a season.
The fen.
In the background you can see a corn storage silo. The dryers were running so it was pretty noisy.
Another boardwalk.
A small pond to the right side of the boardwalk.
Wilma decided it would be a good idea to jump off one of the boardwalks into the muck. She went under the boardwalk to investigate something there and I had the dickens of a time coaxing her out. She finally came out and jumped back up on the boardwalk. She had sunk down to her belly in the muck.
Bridge over a very nice creek. But, alas, no access to the water for the creek beagle. There were actually two such bridges, but no safe creek access for the little critter.
Upland woods.
The creek.
It was by now in the mid 80s and pretty sunny. Not much shade on the path. Wilma had to take a breather on our way back to the car.
I gave her some water out of my water bladder and she laid in some shade on the trail. I think part of the deal was cooling off by getting on the ground, and part of it was using the grass to clean the mud off. By the time she was ready to continue, she was pretty clean again. Sadly for the creek beagle, while there was a very nice looking creek, there just was not any safe access to the water for me to get her close enough to get in. It would have been good for her to cool off, get a drink, and rinse off the mud.
Good thing she got the mud off in the grass, as I never found any water source there. There is none shown on the trail map, and I didn't see any just looking around near the other facilities, so I am guessing no drinking water. Not a big deal for a small preserve like that.
Being as it is such a short hike, and no creek access, it's not likely to be a place we go back to very often (if at all). But, it was worth going once. It is adjacent to a busy state road (route 173), so there is a fair amount of traffic noise, although it is not real distracting.
BTW, we ran across two other dogs who were also walking their humans in the preserve. It may be a popular spot for dogs to bring their humans.
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