Seward Bluff Forest Preserve 11-6-10

This was a pretty good hike. I decided to use video instead of just still pictures to document our little adventure this time. I ended up with about 18 minutes of video. Unfortunately, I only had about 15 minutes available on the SD card I took with me, and I did not take a spare, so the last two clips were taken after the fact.

I am guessing the hike was a little over 5 miles long. My cell phone pedometer and the trail map both seem to support that idea.

Basically we started at the Grove Creek shelter and headed downstream (west) along the south side of the creek until the creek turned north. We followed the creek until we found the foot bridge. Then we came back along the other side of the creek.

Be advised - I seemed to be confused about what direction things were a couple of times. I realized after watching the video what I said sometimes was not really the direction I was going or something was headed. Part of the issue is the trail meanders around a lot and you can basically be going west on a trail but at any one moment in time it might be any direction. There are also a fair number of trails not shown on the trail map so it's hard to follow along the trail map while listening to the narration.

We went a little north up to the horse parking area, and then back to the road.

I am sorry for some of the poor narration. It's my first shot at this kind of thing. I will try to be more aware of some things like not saying "well" so much.

In case anyone is interested, I tried stitching the 50+ little snippets of video together with Windows Movie Maker. It was quite easy to do and the result played quite well inside Movie Maker. Alas, like many MS products, it came with a catch. No matter what, it just would not save the stitiched together movie. It would try but just crash or tell me it was out of memory. After much frustration I gave up on Movie Maker. I found something that is just as easy, is also freeware, and actually worked. It's called VideoPad.

There is at least one mistake in the narration that I noticed. In the first clip I said the trail head is not where it is shown on the map. It actually is. I was reading the map wrong. In fairness to me the map was a little confusing, but that's not really a good excuse, just an average excuse.

I sent an email to the FPD asking about the numbered sign posts. they replied saying that trail maps with the sign posts noted are available at the entrance and the horse parking area. I did not see them either place, but I never actually looked for them either. Next time I will snag one. In the meantime, I added some stuff to the trail map I got off their web site. But don't bet your life on what I marked on the trail map.

[sign pic added 11-13-10]

[11-13-10 fixed embedding]