I got an opportunity to make another visit to Croft State Park and take a little spring walk in the woods. It might still look a good bit like winter:

and it even felt a bit like winter starting out, but a little closer look around:

up:

and even down:


shows that spring is well under way. The early morning chill didn’t last long either, and soon my extra layers were in the backpack.

One thing I like about Croft is that the trails are, well, trails, and are often just a path through the woods (some places seem to consider a “trail” a paved bit of road that just happens to be too narrow for a car). Of course, that means sometimes you have to be a bit creative and use what Nature provides to get around (or over):

That crossing is on the Whitestone Springs trail, which leads, as one might guess, to Whitestone Springs. That must be the spring itself there:

I’ll do the stereotypical social media thing and post about where and what I had for lunch:

A ham, turkey, swiss sandwich on whole wheat and a banana, eaten near the south end of the Rocky Ridge trail. Actually, that was one of about three lunch breaks I took. Like hypersonic flight, walking around in the woods makes me hungry.
A bit over a year ago, a section of the park was torn up by storms and a tornado. The Beech Tree trail was closed for a long time. I headed up that trail this time and found out why:


In the woods, a lot of the wildlife is hidden from view, but in that torn-up area I did spot a red-tailed hawk:

Sorry, that’s the best I could get with my cell phone camera. Still, if you listen, you can tell you’re far from alone out there. Here’s a little video with the sound massaged so you can hear who’s out there.

I have a T-shirt with a picture similar to this one, with the caption “Recalculating”:

The trail didn’t actually go down that hill, but it was a nice view.
My route ended up going north on the Foster’s Mill Loop trail, down the eastern side of the loop to the Rocky Ridge trail, back to Foster’s Mill, then up, around, and back on the Beech Tree trail, and because I just didn’t feel done just yet, the Nature Trail. Then I was done.