It rained hard all night Friday and I contentedly listened to it, sure that there could be no more rain left for our Saturday. However, when I got up on Saturday morning, it was still raining. And when Mary came to pick me up, it was still drizzling. And on our drive to Wind Gap, we had intermittent showers. However, when we got to the park and were preparing all of the rain gear to take along with us, we realized that IT HAD STOPPED RAINING! In fact, it actually was clearing up! It was a miracle! But of course, we carried those rain coats along with us - knowing our record, we were not sure it would last.
As we began our walk, we soon saw a tree which could win the Ugly Tree award-in this forest or any other for that matter! However, as we moved on to find the stamp series, we were very delighted to see how wonderful they were, definitely not the winners of any Ugly Stamp awards. The details in these stamps were wonderful and Mr. M. C. Escher would have been proud to see how Indigo Vulture represented his art. We were first finders in three of the five boxes and hope that more people make the trip to Jacobsburg to enjoy this wonderful group of boxes in an absolutely beautiful park.
After finishing the Escher series, we moved to the opposite side of the park to search for Silent Do
ug's two box series. I had found the first of these two on Christmas Eve 2005 and had to give up on the second one because the trail was a sheet of ice. We found the first box and as we started for the second one, my stomach began to jump again at the memory of this walk. Even on this beautiful day (yes, the weather was still wonderful), it was an eerie walk. Both Mary and I have a phobia about heights and this trail contributed strongly to our fears. My photos don't really convey the fact that this trail goes along the side of the mountain with a fairly sheer drop on the one side. After a bit of coaxing, Mary convinced me to stand between these two trees on a trail which is obviously washing out and has been braced to keep it from disappearing . What you can't see is the sharp drop into the little valley. Below is a picture of Mary gamely hanging on to a tree and not looking down!
We finally found the bridge which led to the trail which led away from this s
cary trail and Mary did one of her tricks of picking a box out of the middle of a seemingly impossible setting. She had to do it because another one of my phobias was causing me a bit of panic. The box turned out to be at the base of this tree covered with my big fear in the woods - poison ivy. Large, hairy, disgusting, repulsive hairy ropes of poison ivy. I was so happy that she was willing to retrieve this box because this was the one which I had not located on that Christmas Eve. Now my half stamp had a mate since it took both stamps to make the complete picture. We lingered here for a little while in preparation for making our return trip on the same scary trail but this time we had another one of our mutual fears realized because we had to travel this trail in reverse and DOWNHILL.In order not to dw
ell on this double whammy for us, we tried to figure out what the ribbons and numbers on the trees along the trail were for. Anyone have any thoughts?When we got back to the car, we were rather pleasantly surprised. Mary had received a GPS for her birthday and is playing with it to learn how to use it. (I received mine the day after I made my first trip to Jacobsburg and still don't know how to use it!) The one thing which Mary has conquered is tracking the miles that we walked. We discovered that we had walked 6.5 miles in this beautiful park on a beautiful day. And, as we started driving back home - the rain began to make its appearance again. What timing!
It was a beautiful day! Thanks for going with me!
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