Adventure Location: Decatur, Al
Today's Date: 8-15-2022
The OFM had a bit of a rough day today from practicing golf ball hitting yesterday. He just could not get it in gear and rolling today. So we had a few short naps and a good amount of ibuprofen for the soreness. But we did make him get out and around to help stay flexible at least. The MAJOR surprise was he cooperated for a change.
We made our way around to a trail we noticed the other day. But first some background. The Point Mallard folks do a pretty good job of keeping the 11 miles of trails in decent shape for the walkers and bikers. And there is a lot of walkers and bikers that use the trails.
About four years ago something tornadic in in nature came through the area and made a mess of several spots on the trails. The parks folks hopped to and within a few days they had the main trails open for business but not all the mess next to the trails under control. It took about a year of work to get most of the torn up stuff moved out or put in an appropriate spot to rot.
There was one short .81 mile near a slough that was not finished when the storm came through and pretty well just shut the trail down. It had been finished enough we were allowed to walk it but it was still pretty rough. The storm pretty well tore it up and made it worse than just unfinished. The OFM Team did explore it a bit back at the first chance after the storm and we did not go all the way on it. It wasn't worth the effort and danger from falling ded trees and branches.
Now for the good news. The crews are working on that trail “in their spare time” to get it usable again. We figured it was so messed up that it had been abandoned. So we took a look at it and grabbed a few photos. The work progress is slow but it is at least still in the park plans and when ready it is a very nice trail and has parking area nearby it for about 15 vehicles.
Now for the tour. The start of the trail has the usual signs and a history sign about the historical use of the area.
Chief Double Head was the leader of the Indians in the area way back then. The trail starts and stops here. It makes a nice large loop out to a pond and back.
The first couple of hundred feet have been cleaned up well and is what we can expect when the project is completed.
The trail is on a narrow strip of land so most of the knocked down or other brush, trees etc. will have to be hauled out to the brush disposal area on the other side of the golf course. So it will be slow going. The next three pictures are of the spots we could get to reasonably easily and safe to take pictures. Virtually all that timber laying around and making a mess will have to be cut up by hand and hauled out on small trailers pulled by small equipment.
Just to let you know the rough trail we followed for these pictures did not even get to the halfway point yet. From this area we turned back and headed to the Castle. Sure enough the next morning we woke with several chiggers making their new homes in the OFM body.
It will be a nice trail when it is finished and a good place for trying to have tooooo much fun.
Ah chiggers. I have been one of those fortunate people chiggers have never liked much. If they do like you, well, watch out. Now that I think of it, mosquitos don't like me much either, though they've gotten more fond of me as I've aged. Mostly of the time they would land on everybody around me. I don't even want to speculate about why, am just grateful.
ReplyDeleteOFM's computer is acting up. He'll be back after carefully explaining who's in charge.
ReplyDeleteHA! I suspect orders will be given and eventually obeyed. OR else. Hope so anyway. Thanks for the note Kiddo.
ReplyDelete