Today I got back to one of my favorite places to take a walk in the woods: Croft State Park, where there are literally dozens of kilometers of trails, although some areas are temporarily closed right now for “ordnance removal”. This area used to to be a military training base back during World War II and they’re working to clear up any remaining Dangerous Stuff from that time.

Now this is my kind of trail:

That was along the Beech Tree trail, which apparently doesn’t get a lot of traffic. Correction, a lot of human traffic:

This area was torn up by a tornado back in 2019, but seems to be recovering nicely. Compare with what I saw back then.

One thing about nature, everything gets recycled. It’s definitely “one life form’s trash is another’s treasure” (yes, these trails are used by horses).

The Beech Tree trail has a couple of creek crossings, which I thought might be a challenge after the previous night’s rains, but not a big deal with a little “rock collecting”:

This one took a bit of a “leap of faith”, as it wasn’t possible to gauge ahead of time how solid that bit of tree was. Worked out fine though.

The natural world is always changing. I’m sure there was something there for this vine to wrap around at one time:

All in all it was a perfect day. The prior night’s rain rinsed everything off (although it did leave some trail areas muddy), and the east wind kept a pretty solid overcast in place to keep temperatures in the 60F’s. Not the kind of day you might expect around here with it being almost summer, but I’ll take it!