Time change grumbles and the Bay Boardwalk

Crooked River State Park

Site #6

St. Mary's, Georgia

Well this is one of my two least favorite days of the entire year.  The one where we arbitrarily decide the sun will go down earlier today than it did yesterday.  I must admit this makes me mad every single time it happens.  Why do we still do this?   I have yet to find an answer anywhere I have looked.   Do you guys know?

In this case, Russians are smarter than we are.  NPR informed me mid grumble that the Russian president or prime minister or whoever has just decided that they aren't going to do this twice yearly flip flop anymore.   I think they may have one up on us here in terms of intelligence.

So after grumbling just a bit more, I got on my running shoes and ran it off listening to a biography of Marcel Proust on my walkman.  Now that all books have gone to CDs, I can pick up books on tape for ten and 25 cents.  Makes the hour go faster given that I’m not one who runs for the love of it.

David did the laundry while I was gone.  Said it was his turn.  I think he’s still feeling guilty especially now that it’s all public knowledge. J   This is the least expensive park for laundry that we’ve seen.  75¢ for a 30 minutes wash and 75¢ for a 45 minute dry. 

Still pretty cool here today.  39 again this morning and the high today never got over 60.  We’ve been waiting for the  weather to warm up so we can go to Cumberland Island National Seashore for the day or take a kayaking trip on the St. Mary’s River.   Actually the problem with the kayaking trip is the tides.   Since this is a tidal area, you have to plan your paddling according to them and the high tides have been too early or too late these past days.  Looks like we may be able to get in tomorrow early afternoon though so David spent some time today planning that.  Supposed to get up to 69 tomorrow and in to the 70’s Tuesday and Wednesday so we’re thinking  Cumberland Island for either or both of those days.

We did take a hike on a short mile and a half trail in the park called the Bay Boardwalk trail.  They have several trails here that are all very nice.  We’d done the longer ones when we were here before although I ran them all again just to see if anything had changed.

The park is very nicely laid out in that the campground is away and off to itself but is still accessible to everything by both bike and foot.  They have trails from the campground to the Nature Center, to all the other trails, to the miniature golf course (which appears to be closed now), to the swimming pool and the visitor’s center.   No need to drive your car.  That doesn’t mean people don’t but they wouldn’t have to.

So we set off from the campground on foot taking the path that led to the Nature Center.  Looks like they had some sort of Halloween doings.

Here is the beginning of the trail which takes you into a bay forest ecosystem.  This heartwood wetland is dominated by two species of broad-leaved evergreen trees, Loblolly Bay and Swamp Bay.  Typically swamps in South Georgia contain cypress like in Okefenokee or gum trees.  In this Bay forest there are more mid-story trees than in the surrounding pinewoods and fewer grasses, the air feels more humid and of course it is close in and shaded.

The boardwalk was really unnecessary today with the drought.  The ground around and under it was bone dry.

We learned a lot about the ecosystem and saw many plants like the water oak and 3 different ferns which were unfamiliar to us.  At the beginning of the trail they have a nice brochure and numbered spots along about the first half mile of the hike.  It was very informative although probably needs updating since at least at a couple of the stops the described plant was no where to be seen.  One of those was poison ivy which we definitely would have recognized had it been there.  J

The trail leaves the Boardwalk area and returns to the more common pine woods with saw palmetto understory.

Along that section is what the map describes as an Observation Tower.  There didn't seem to be much to observe but we went up anyway.

And when we got there we were rather puzzled as to what they thought you would observe from here through the hardware cloth AND fiberglass screens.  I can only guess that at least the screens were intended to keep out the insects that would be here during most of the year though thankfully not today.  But I'm not sure why the hardware cloth was necessary and it further impeded the view.  As you can see they had observation holes cut in both but ....

But as you can see below, apparently they were put there only for children, people in wheel chairs who couldn't get up the stairs to the tower or folks a lot shorter than even I am at only 5 feet tall.  Folks of my height and taller had no choice but to look through both the screen and the hardware cloth.   A puzzling design to say the least.

The trail continued in the pine and palmetto forest.

The loop trail finished back near the Bay Boardwalk and from here you can see the clear difference in the two ecosystems.  The open pine forest on the right and the darker dense bay forest on the left.

Even with the puzzling observation tower, it was a pleasant hike and the first part was very informative.

With the time change we had only about 45 minutes left before it was dark.  Dark by 6:00 seems very dreary to me.  Well we’ve had this discussion.

We had salmon fillets and a delicious salad for dinner with cream cheese iced brownies for dessert.  It was eaten before I could get you a picture of how good it all looked on the plate.  J

After dinner David did some sort of computer work.  Not sure what.  I posted yesterday’s blog, taking my chances with the Air Card totals and then snuggled into the lounge chair for some long over due reading.

And that’s about it for our day.  Nothing spectacular, just a nice relaxing day with a little of this and a little of that.   Hope to get out paddling tomorrow.  Hope you’ll come along.