Return To The Walter Pratt Camping Area - Part 1

We had one of the most idyllic summer days which I've ever seen. It was warm but not hot, low humidity, with blue skies, puffy clouds and gentle breezes - while all the while birds and crickets sang. I decided to take the dogs for a walk at a nearby park. It's normally just a ten minute drive to the park but there was a bridge out a quarter mile before the entrance. The location was so incredibly rural that the few roads which would have taken me around to enter from the other direction petered out in a forest or ended with their own bridges out. I drove around for nearly two hours, exploring dirt lanes through forests and country roads which just ended in the middle of nowhere even though the map said they continued on. I finally found a way, though, and took the dogs for a short but beautiful walk.

I quickly spotted a number of Indian Pipe plants, a flowering species without chlorophyll which grows in shady spots in association with certain trees and fungi. I've always found it fascinating:

The dogs cared nothing for plants and just ran wildly through the trees, headed for the reservoir:

My frustration fell away in such a lovely setting:

Clover was the first to wade into the water:

The other dogs kept their feet dry, at least for the time being:

There was much excited running through the trees and I tried to keep the dogs close to me without yelling because we were not alone. There were campers not too far away:

Pine needles, mosses, mushrooms and Wild Strawberries carpeted the ground:

We approached the tip of a peninsula which jutted out into the reservoir:

The dogs ran to the top of a hill but I called them back down to the shoreline. A dog on the opposite shore barked a few times:

We explored the water's edge:

Seamus got his feet wet, wanting to go see the dog on the other shore - but that was the end of it. We were having an entirely pleasant walk in a beautiful setting. I'll post Part 2 tomorrow: