Saturday, January 30 2021
After sleeping a tad late (7:30) and fixing pancakes for breakfast, I took Molly for a long "jog". My leg was hurting worse than ever, and I was slow even for me. We went down the road, past the restroom and tent camping area, toward a pavilion and some trailheads. We took a trail that said it was 3/4 mile to the river, and it's possible that we went that far. But I'm not sure--we stopped when the trail ended at a little fishing pier out in a small river. I overheard some people saying that the trail kept on going after a left-turn at the river.
Spots of slick mud dotted the trail so I had to slow down and walk through them. My shoes got a little messy, but no big problem. At least I wasn't slogging with soaked feet the whole time, and I didn't have to peel off my socks the moment I returned to Mammoth.
There were three cyclists that overtook me on the trail, but other than that it was deserted until I started back. Then I met a group of about four people and two kids, then later a single lady with a mask on. But no animals at all, and only a few butterbutts and wrens in the brush.
On the road we had passed a short boardwalk to Mother Tree, a huge old cypress that was a lone remnant of the ones that used to populate the swamp. The signage explained that the big trees had been cut down in the early 1900s, leaving only ones that were rotten on the inside or otherwise inaccessible. Since Cypresses tend to "flare out" at the bottom, the loggers would construct a scaffold at the top of the flared portion and just saw the trees from the point where they slimmed down. As we were walking around, I looked for trees that had been cut like that but didn't see any. I suspect it was too long ago--it had been eighty or ninety years since the logging boom in the cypress swamps.
After my walk, Ed and I took a drive in search of the nature trail at Joyce Wildlife Management area. We found it, but only after passing it up by about eight miles and tracking back.
What a glorious swamp! We walked the short boardwalk to the end, peering into the scum-covered water in search of alligators, turtles, or whatever, but saw nothing except yellow-rumped warblers. I later did the research and found out that alligators go inactive (there's a special word for it, but it's not the same as hibernation) from October until March. So the chances of seeing an alligator in January are like, zilch.
But it was indeed glorious. I wish it had been twenty miles longer.
Then back to camp,where I ate lunch and inexplicably took a dozing-sort-of nap which wasted away the rest of the afternoon and screwed up my sleep that night. But no matter. I'd planned to be working on contract work for the time, so napping was preferable.
The campground was noisy, although our particular site was pleasant enough. It was a little too chilly to want to sit outside without a fire, so I only noticed the noise when I went for the evening dog walk. Typically I try to do the last walk sometime between 8:30 and 9:00, although with the earlier dark and the chill of winter, it's temping to do it even earlier than 8:30. But still, I'm asking the dogs to hold their business for over ten hours, from evening walk until morning walk (7:30-ish), so it would be mean to stretch the period much longer.
Molly and I walked in the dark toward the restroom and the road that goes out of the park, hoping to repeat the pleasant walk away from all the other campers that we'd taken on the previous night. But we'd barely gotten twenty yards when she went crazy, trying to attack the trees on either side. With my weak human senses, all I could see was a pool of water on the side of the road. But I'm sure she was hot on the scent of an armadillo or some such evil creature of the night that plagues her existence.
So we turned back, picked up Zack, and walked toward the other campsites in our loop. There was a bit of loud partying going on, but no critters. At one point a pickup truck took off and roared around the campground going way more than the 5-mile per hour speed limit, revving his already-loud engine up louder. He left, and I'm sure I wasn't the only person glad to see him go.
And all quiet for the night. Except for the very loud swamp critters.
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