Thursday January 27th 2022

The trend of cloud covered days continued. Today the rain didn’t fall and the cloud cover wasn’t as thick all day. There was one point in the afternoon that it looked like the sun might break through, but the clouds won out. The temperature also recovered into the mid sixties even with a strong wind out of the northeast.

For the first time since Monday I took a real hike. My choice today was the labyrinth of trails in the state park south and west of the campground. The trails are easy to follow, but they aren’t really marked. They are wide grass and sandy surfaced paths designed for waking, bicycling and horse back riding. Every intersection is marked with a number and a set of arrows providing directions to other numbered intersections. This works great if you are carrying a map, but it isn’t very helpful without the map to decode the numbered intersections. Since I didn’t set out with a map in hand I soon felt slightly lost.

I had three options to solve my lost in the woods problem. I could cheat big time and download a map with my phone or turn around and backtrack along my route. The third option that I chose was to continue to turn in the same direction at every intersection. Since I knew there were no dead end trails, I eventually would complete a loop back onto may original route or find a known landmark. I ended up on a much bigger loop than I intended, but it was a nice walk on a cloudy day. There was nobody else on the trail today.

For inside activity during this period of gloomy weather, I’ve been doing more research for my summer travels. The question I need to answer is where do I want to be on each of the major holidays from the end of May to September. Then I can fill in the blank area between those potential bottlenecks. At least, that is the approach I’m taking this year.