Sunday, April 7, 2024:
Spending the second night at: Minooka Park Campground near Jemison Alabama
Weather- clear and mild: Hi 80, low 54, Humidity Hi 87%, low 30.
Today was a nice leisurely sleep-in day. We had to run our little electric heaters last night cuz it got chilly willy! Tonight will be warmer so maybe no heaters or coolers will be necessary. Our plan today was to do some trail riding since there’s probably a good couple hours worth of trails for us to tootle around on. I picked this place because I figured Kenny would want to do some “less serious” riding to check Kawi out for the season.
We were given this map when we checked in yesterday and weren’t sure what the colors on the map meant. As we rode around, we discovered the colors didn’t have anything to do with difficulty, it was just a way to designate the various trails out in the woods. The trails were well marked and matched up to this side of the map pretty well.
The other side of the map wasn’t quite as easy to follow, but then there was this statement on it: “Pine mountain has three steep hills. To avoid hills follow signs to dirt road or turn on timber loop and exit at dirt road.” RIGHT! That statement right there was like a Starship Enterprise tractor-beam pulling Kenny in, leaving us with no option but to go there. The steep hills were calling him in and he had to go, so that is the direction we headed first.
We found it – Pine Mountain. This didn’t look bad at all!
They were some good rocky hills. The great thing about Kawi is that he’ll just crawl right up them without having to give him a whole bunch of throttle. Easy peasy.
This was another uphill rocky road, it just doesn’t look like much in 2-D, but it took some driving skill.
The forest is just starting to green up with leaves, so it is still pretty early spring here and the sun was shining right through making everything pretty.
Check me out! I was test driving my new cheetah skins that I made for myself. HA! The Kaai shoulder straps really dig into my collar bones, so I found an old fleecey blanket and sewed up some shoulder pads with velcro so they’re easy to put on and take off to wash. They really did help! I made some for Shannon too. She had tried them on in their Saki in the driver’s seat because she drives half the time and that’s when she needs them most. I sent this picture to them and Cam said that the driver in Kawi needs them too. HA!
There weren’t many ground flowers yet, but there were a few flowering bushes and trees. I saw lots of dogwood trees which showed up really well with the rest of the trees just starting to show leaves. I’m not sure what these pink delicate bushes are, but we saw several and this one was right next to the trail waiting for a picture. Remember from last year that I discovered that my Apple i-phone looks at my pictures of plants and then looks them up in the wiki? Well, here is what my phone says this is: “The piedmont azalea or mountain azalea or wild azalea or native azalea or dead man’s handkerchief is a pink-blooming azalea native to the Eastern United States”. OK – I think the dead man’s handkerchief wins this naming contest! What a weird description.
There was a small lake that the trails went around – this was where I tried to capture a piece of it through Kenny’s window. Not a great pic, I know.
This was the only other ‘flower’ or plant with any color. These flowering plants were anywhere in size from just a standing flower to a bush looking like this, with bright red straws of color. My tele/wiki smarty-pants phone say this is the Red Buckeye, also known as scarlet buckeye, woolly buckeye and firecracker plant. I kind of like the firecracker name. They do look like those packs of firecrackers where the fuses of 100 firecrackers are all tied together along a central spine.
We really had a great variety of terrain in this park. Uppies, downies, aroundies, 180’s, rockies, smoothies, muddies and dry.
Here are our various adventures: The light blue is from day one-half when we just went out to see what is here. Then today we did yellow, came back to camp for some lunch, then did pink. All-in-all, we put on about 20 miles or so and maybe 4 hours of riding. It was worth a stop for two nights, as we enjoyed the riding, and the campground was beautiful.
Dinner was sketti and salad, and by golly we were both pretty hungry! Kenny washed Kawi down so that he wouldn’t have any blobs of mud and dirt falling off in our house. He did get pretty dirty today! Tomorrow we’re headed for Mi’sippi just for an overnight, then on to the Ozark National Forest in Arkansas. I’m really bummed. The only rain for weeks is going to be Monday night through Wednesday night, which is going to make all the trails muddy and yucky. Our reservation in the Ozarks near Russellville is for three nights, Tuesday – Thursday. Maybe we’ll be lucky and the storm won’t float that far north.