TRAIL VANDALS

After the ice storms it finally warmed up to where I could get a hike in so I went down to one of my favorite trails in Perry County, Indiana, the Two Lakes Loop Trail. This is a trail that has been voted the best day hike trail in Indiana by Backpacker Magazine. What I found on this day, however, would have put it lower down the list.

The hike started out okay when after making my first creek crossing I began to find deep ruts dug into the ground by four-wheelers. When I spotted the first set of tracks I thought it was probably the DNR officers checking the trail. Later, however, I began to find ruts like these in the dirt. I know that at least two different ATV's were used because of the different tracks. Something that told me they were having a good ol' time was the trail of Bud Light cans they left along the way. Needless to say it kind of griped my butt a bit so I'm doing some venting here.

This picture will you what the weight of ice can do to a tree. Now you might first look at this picture and think the wind blew it down but you have to look all around you to know for sure what happened. If it had been wind other trees would have been blown over too and that was not the case. I have been in a big wind in the woods before and have witnessed trees coming down. This definitely was a case of heavy ice bringing down this pine tree. This most likely would have been from the second ice storm. When the ice melted from the first storm the ground was completely saturated with water. This made the ground soft and when this tree became weighted down with the heavy ice it simply fell over. There were a few other smaller trees the fell to the same fate behind where this picture was taken.

One good thing I saw on the hike was a couple of my favorite creeks were back up and running again with water. Last year's drought had completely dried them up and it was good to hear their bubbling again. Still, seeing what the ATVs had done kind of made thing a bit of a bummer. Mother Nature has a way of getting back at things like that though. I'm sure she'll find some way to let them it's not nice to fool with her.