Can you say “overgrown”? After getting up at the crack of dawn to ride today, and a quick liquid breakfast, we headed east on the mostly linear trail here. We had originally planned on going west, but we ended up going east because there seemed to be at least one loop option, and we prefer those whenever we can, and west didn’t offer one. Also, there was a bridge apparently out along the trail, and though it looked far enough away to not interfere with the length of ride we wanted, we still preferred the loop. Off we went out the trailhead which ran out of the back of Site #9 right next to us. We had a short stretch of gravel road before we reached the actual trail, which had nice footing, but was so overgrown we were getting slapped by stuff left, right and center. The first section was in mostly new forest, small trees that didn’t provide any shade of note, then we crossed to road to another section that had larger trees, and many that were down and required us to go around them. Actually, they looked like they’d been down for years, because the trail around them was certainly well-established, but it was even MORE overgrown, making the going a bit tough. We finally came to the beginning of the loop, which, even though it was a two-track forest road, it was STILL overgrown to the point of being uncomfortable. Here there were a number of stretches that would have been perfect for trotting or cantering, but the grass was so high you couldn’t see what lay underneath it, and we were worried about twisting an ankle or worse, so the best we did were short stretches of slow trots. The road weaved along the river at the north end, which was pretty enough, but heading south was narrower and more overgrown again. We ended up hitting the motorized gravel road at the south end of the loop, and deciding to just take the road the rest of the way back, just so we could have a little open space. Just for fun, we crosses the covered bridge (which took a brief moment of persuasion) just to see what the west trail looked like, and although it looked like it MIGHT have been a bit more traveled, it was still WAY overgrown. Pity, too, because I suspect if they did a bit more mowing of the trails, it would help considerably with the bug problem. That said, the campground was pristinely mowed, and in fact, they came to mow it yesterday, and it looked like a state park, but they obviously don’t think much about the trails. One ranger actually asked me to drop a note in the box if there were any trees down along the trail! Too lazy to go look for himself, I guess, and considering there were more than half a dozen that had looked like they’d been there for years, not much care is being taken by management to remedy it, judging by all the well-worn bypasses. Amazing what a difference management priorities make! Anyway, we were back by 11:00, and before the heat settled in too badly, though it was already above 90, and spend the rest of the day in cool air conditioning, at least until the evening when we started running low on generator gas and had to cut back to fans. Incredible, without AC one 5-gallon tank of gas lasts a week, while with AC we went through 5 gallons in less than two days! Good lesson though. Sweated our way through the evening, glad we decided to only stay here half a week.
Speak Your Mind