Christine mentioned to me last week that a new lot for Green Lakes was now open off Pearson Road. There is a trailhead that comes out of the park at the road and the lot is now located on the opposite side of the road, across from the trailhead. I confess to not knowing that trail at all; I have always avoided it, because I consider it a trail to nowhere if it just abruptly ends at a road.
But with a new parking lot being nearest to the house (not that an extra mile necessarily matters), I decided to start my morning here. By the time I rolled out of bed and arrived on location, it was already 7:30, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. With the light already leaning toward harsh, I elected to set the JPEG engine to monochrome and go for a walk.
The trail that exits the main park now continues across to the other side and seems to be used almost exclusively by mountain bikers, I think, and I am thinking that they have been using it for a while. Without a parking lot, there hasn’t been a reason for me to walk to this portion of the park, but it is clear that mountain bikers have been riding through here for some time.
There is little in the way of prettiness along the trail, but I continued to photograph things that looked ‘curvy’ to me to satisfy the camera club’s assignment this month.
There is a cell phone tower at the top of the hill, hiding amongst the trees. I am guessing that it was there before the state obtained the property, but I can’t know for certain.
One neat thing is that the trail runs along the western edge of Hafner’s tree farm atop the hill and might serve as a nice spot to try to capture a sunrise in the fall. All the leading lines amongst the rows of Christmas trees seem to run from near-due west to near-due east, so the sunrise will be best aligned nearer an equinox, so I will keep in mind in September.
Aside from discovering the view to the east over the tree farm, the walk was unremarkable. If features some nice winding trails to photograph, but the wildlife was scant. The fields adjacent to the trails may offer chances to capture images of deer in the future; there were 2 old tree stands on the property that had long suffered from abandonment and disrepair, so someone thought the area was worthy of their time at some point in the distant past.
I don’t know that I will choose to walk these trails too often, but they served me well this morning and I’ll be back to visit someday, maybe sooner than later. Time will tell, of course.
