Well, so this blog may not be directly concerned with knitting, but isn't that metaphorical? You know, since knitting itself is a wonderous linkage of yarn, winding around itself to create something more than simple fibers, but something useful and beautiful? Not that this blog will be of any use or have beauty... but it will be something more than itself... if that's possible.
Anyone who reads this purely as a State Park review can dismiss the first paragraph as it is just nonsense. I promise I did not eat any of the fabulously colored mushrooms that I found today on my journey! I went to Tyler State Park this morning and hiked two trails. The first, Black Jack Nature Trail, is a mere 0.5 miles and can be used as a warm up or cool down. It has some nice flowers such as the Wild Violets and some others which I will identify and list later. Hues of green, pink, purple, yellow, and one orange blooming plant are displayed. You can do this trail leisurely in 15 minutes.
The second trail named "Loop A" was great! It was longer, at 2.53 miles and took me approximately 2 hours. I stopped a lot to gaze around and study the different mushrooms. I also like to deviate from the trail a bit to go look at stuff. So a fast hiker may be able to do this trail much faster. You first go thru what I affectionaly deemed "The Baby Pines". When you begin and end the trail at the top of the forest you will go through some tall grasses and lots of tiny baby pine trees. I quickly found a walking stick because I was walking through continuous spider webs (I feel guilty in retrospect!) which were very itchy. The walking stick would go before me and knock them down.
I crossed a ravine, down the hill, winding deeper into the forest. My favorite tree is the pine tree so being surrounded by a pine forest was heaven! I only saw one tiny frog, one juvinile skink (lizard), one dead luna moth, and one cave cricket eating a mushroom. There were only a couple of wasps that I noticed and I think those were dirt dobbers. No hornets, no mosquitos. The biggest surprise were the mushrooms! Everywhere I looked there were mushrooms! Of all shapes, sizes, and colors! I am going to provide a list of them below. Pink topped (no spots), up-turned, 70's goldenrod yellow, black necrotic looking, white nipple looking, orange, tiny brown, large toadstool.... they were everywhere!
The gift shop had nothing really native to the park itself except some carved wooden keychains in the shapes of trout may or may not have been made from a local wood. Apparently you can fish at this park though, and take your catch home. The bathrooms were very nice, new, flushable toilets (not port-a-potty style), though I found it strange that the only sign in here was this:
Boletus oliveisporus
Kuo, M. (2007, December). Boletus oliveisporus. Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com Web site: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/boletus_oliveisporus.html
