FINALLY...BACK ON THE TRAIL

After three and a half months of heat and drought, the air is finally beginning to cool down enough that I was able to get a chance to get back on a hiking trail. The drought is still here, which I will show you results of later, but at least the temperatures have come down to something a person can stand. Hiking with temps of 90 and above is not a good idea when all the water sources are pretty much dried up.

What I did this Sunday was go back to the Two Lakes Loop Trail in Perry County, Indiana. I've talked about this one several times and you can go back to the archives to see some of my past hikes here. Because it had been so long since I had hiked I didn't know how my body would take the hills and trail so I first thought of doing only 8 miles. After the first three, however, I actually felt pretty good so I went for the entire 12 instead and did much better than I expected do. I did the twelve miles in 4 hours, 53 minutes and I didn't consider that bad at all after such a layoff.

One of the first things I found was this batch of feathers belonging to a blue jay. Normally blue jays like to say in the tops of tall trees but this group of feathers looked like it might have been a young jay that might have fallen from a nest. One thing that was definite was that some type of predator had apparently made lunch of the bird. There are a lot of foxes and coyotes in this area and I know of at last one bobcat because of tracks I found there two years ago. Whatever it was something had found a meal to live by.

Now about the creeks and the drought. Southern Indiana and central Kentucky are currently under an extreme drought situation here with rainfall at about 10 inches below normal for the year. Burn bans are everywhere so that fields and wooded areas don't end up charred. (Some do anyway.) The creek in this picture is one that has been affected by the drought. Normally it is running both steadily and rapidly under this tree. If you go back to some of my earlier posts you'll even find pictures taken during the winter when there were icicles hanging from the bottom of the log. Now there is nothing but a very small trickle. The pooled water in the background hardly moves and a pool below this log is beginning to get a stagnant look to it. The water is moving yes but not at a fast enough pace to make it look healthy. To use this creek right now as a water source you would need a good filter to pump the water through to make it drinkably safe.

This was the second creek I found extremely affected by the drought. Under normal conditions this is a stream I usually have to take my boots off to wade through to the other side. Again you can go back to the archive and see a picture of my foot in the water with about 6 inches running over the top of it. There is a little more running here than at the previous creek making this water a little safer to drink, though it would still need to be filtered. Creating a small running pool in the rocks would be a good place to place your intake hose. Pumping water from here would not bother me at all. It is kind of disturbing to see the creeks this low. It will take a great deal of rain to raise the water levels here. Some of the springs on other local trails I hike are also completely dry. Unless you carry in water ahead of time at certain locations the Adventure Trail in Harrison County, Indiana would be full of problems. The springs that were gushing with water in the spring are completely dry. Water is at a bare minimum if there at all. Indian Creek is also very low near the Indian Creek Shelter. I'm presently not hiking that area because of the water problems there.

I think it was this sight here that bothered me the most. This has always been my favorite spot on the trail because it was always running with water and had that Tennessee mountain look and feel to it. Now to see it is a very sad thing. The creek has completely dried up because of the drought. The crawfish and minnows that used to live here are gone, probably dead and dried up as well. What I always liked about this spot was the bubbling of the water running across the rocks. I went ahead and had lunch here but it wasn't the same as it usually is. All there is now are dry rocks and crusty dried leaves. I'm really hoping that changes later in the fall and during the winter.

Something I found interesting was types of fungus I had never seen before. The ones here in this picture were as big and even bigger than cauliflowers. This is only a small part of the number that were all over this log. Normally you see the flat ribbed type of fungus but these were much different. I don't know if the lack of water had anything to do with it or not. These were very alive and moist. I'm not the type of person who knows a lot about fungus and mushroom, except for those nice big morels that are great to fry up for breakfast, lunch or supper. Except for those I don't really know what is safe and what is not so even the thought of these being safe was kept far from my mind. I do know they did have an interesting look to them, which is why I decided to photograph them. These were the only ones like this I saw on the entire trail too, and I've never seen them anywhere else.

Needless to say when I saw this fungus I hit the breaks with both feet to get this picture. I've seen fungus of different colors but this was one that really jumped out at me. I don't know what made the colors like they are but they were definitely brilliant. Something had picked at the lower left side but there was no clue as to what that might have been. It might have even been a human to possibly touch it to see if it was real or plastic. The big question was though was this a beautiful killer???

I'll finish this with a look at Indian Lake like I haven't shown you before. Most of the time this lake looks on the muddy side but this time the mud is all but gone. Because the water levels are down there is very little movement. Even the overflow currently is moving very little water so the silt has all settled to the bottom. This particular day there were several boats trying their luck with hook, line, and sinker. I don't know if the fish had any idea about what was going with with the lack of rain but I'm sure if they did they'd be like the rest of us wishing for some of it to fall out of the sky. It's making me wonder what winter is going to be like. Will we be able to use just light jackets or will we need the big heavy parkas and the high topped snow boots??? As fickle as she's been lately nothing would surprise me.