Afternoon walk

I wanted to see if I had marked the trail well enough. There is a spot in the trail that gives the hiker two choices.
Either choice is good and will lead to the same place.

Once marked it seems they are so easy to follow. Well, they really aren't. But I had redone some of the notches on the trees anyway.

Down in the valley the snowmobile club folks had taken a bulldozer to the creek. They must have retrieved the culvert and put it back down as a crossing.

This will hold until the next big snow melt or flash flood. The dozer filled in the area with loose soil. Erosion was never an issue until they started moving the earth around.

Here is the hole that they filled in again. It was about 6 feet deep.

I followed the valley to the end and searched out the spot that used to have a 'waterfall' of sorts.
I found it. Of course everything had changed drastically since spring. We'd had a few mild flash floods and as with this area, it rearranged the land. The shot below is the current version.

This is from 3 years ago.

I love how things never really stay the same.

After I visited what I call 'the spring falls' [a large spring is above this area and flows through water cress and rocks before it burrows into the land and joins the main creek] ~ I went to the Long Rocky Dry Run.
It is one of the harder places to get to.

Here is a view from above it after I climbed out.

Don't be fooled by the photo, the steep sides are challenging. Rock and mountain climbing are good skills to have here.

As I went home I stopped by another place that had changed quite a bit with the freezing temperatures.

One of the places I like to jump over the creek is here. This was Sunday.

The above shot is in the same place but on Friday.

The volume of water has changed in certain spots too. Here it was again on Sunday.

And here it was on November 11th.

The heavier flow of water has shifted to the opposite side of the rocks changing the whole look of the little pond area.

However, the trout didn't seem to mind a bit.

I could have spent hours exploring more. But daylight fades early and chores must be done.
I headed home.