{"id":1247,"date":"2019-03-30T10:47:29","date_gmt":"2019-03-30T15:47:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/?p=1247"},"modified":"2019-03-30T10:47:29","modified_gmt":"2019-03-30T15:47:29","slug":"croft-in-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/croft-in-spring\/","title":{"rendered":"Croft in Spring"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I got an opportunity to make another visit to <A HREF=\"https:\/\/southcarolinaparks.com\/croft\">Croft State Park<\/A> and take a little spring walk in the woods. It might still look a good bit like winter:<br \/>\n<A HREF=\"https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/2fnnbcR\"><IMG SRC=\"\/media\/IMG_20190329_103210182_HDR_tn.jpg\"><\/A><br \/>\nand it even felt a bit like winter starting out, but a little closer look around:<br \/>\n<A HREF=\"https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/2dYtKQv\"><IMG SRC=\"\/media\/IMG_20190329_074515289_HDR_tn.jpg\"><\/A><br \/>\nup:<br \/>\n<A HREF=\"https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/2dYtpDi\"><IMG SRC=\"\/media\/IMG_20190329_112609314_HDR_tn.jpg\"><\/A><br \/>\nand even down:<br \/>\n<A HREF=\"https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/RAYFCr\"><IMG SRC=\"\/media\/IMG_20190329_100206049_HDR_tn.jpg\"><\/A><br \/>\n<A HREF=\"https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/2egq4XN\"><IMG SRC=\"\/media\/IMG_20190329_101405797_HDR_tn.jpg\"><\/A><br \/>\nshows that spring is well under way. The early morning chill didn&#8217;t last long either, and soon my extra layers were in the backpack.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8220;trail&#8221; 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):<br \/>\n<A HREF=\"https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/2fnnhk2\"><IMG SRC=\"\/media\/IMG_20190329_094032616_HDR_tn.jpg\"><\/A><br \/>\nThat crossing is on the Whitestone Springs trail, which leads, as one might guess, to Whitestone Springs. That must be the spring itself there:<br \/>\n<A HREF=\"https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/RAYNik\"><IMG SRC=\"\/media\/IMG_20190329_093155691_HDR_tn.jpg\"><\/A><br \/>\nI&#8217;ll do the stereotypical social media thing and post about where and what I had for lunch:<br \/>\n<A HREF=\"https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/24KNrCD\"><IMG SRC=\"\/media\/IMG_20190329_110631433_HDR_tn.jpg\"><\/A><br \/>\nA 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 <A HREF=\"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/strange-idea-1-flight-of-fancy\/\">hypersonic flight<\/A>, walking around in the woods makes me hungry.<br \/>\nA 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:<br \/>\n<A HREF=\"https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/2dYtivg\"><IMG SRC=\"\/media\/IMG_20190329_115019537_HDR_tn.jpg\"><\/A><br \/>\n<A HREF=\"https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/2egpUW1\"><IMG SRC=\"\/media\/IMG_20190329_114411677_HDR_tn.jpg\"><\/A><br \/>\nIn the woods, a lot of the wildlife is hidden from view, but in that torn-up area I did spot a red-tailed hawk:<br \/>\n<IMG SRC=\"\/media\/IMG_20190329_114516289_HDR_a_tn.jpg\"><br \/>\nSorry, that&#8217;s the best I could get with my cell phone camera. Still, if you listen, you can tell you&#8217;re far from alone out there. Here&#8217;s a little video with the sound massaged so you can hear who&#8217;s out there.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/144590307@N03\/40533658593\/in\/album-72157682000331396\/\" title=\"VID_20190329_091154021_final\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/pw\/images\/en-us\/video-process.png\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"VID_20190329_091154021_final\"><\/a><br \/>\nI have a T-shirt with a picture similar to this one, with the caption &#8220;Recalculating&#8221;:<br \/>\n<A HREF=\"https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/RAYkCr\"><IMG SRC=\"\/media\/IMG_20190329_121407604_HDR_tn.jpg\"><\/A><br \/>\nThe trail didn&#8217;t actually go down that hill, but it was a nice view.<br \/>\nMy <A HREF=\"https:\/\/embed.widencdn.net\/pdf\/plus\/scprt\/sohstjfuoz\/CroftTrailMap.pdf?u=sgt8lu\">route<\/A> ended up going north on the Foster&#8217;s Mill Loop trail, down the eastern side of the loop to the Rocky Ridge trail, back to Foster&#8217;s Mill, then up, around, and back on the Beech Tree trail, and because I just didn&#8217;t feel done just yet, the Nature Trail. Then I was done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1247"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1250,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions\/1250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}