2021-06-25 43 -78

Location

At the edge of the Clarence Bike path in Memorial Park

Participants

Pedalpusher

Expedition

With the day off, I knew I had plenty of time to get to this hash, and being towards the North, I thought I might surprise my girlfriend after she got done with work. She is on 'Summer Hours' which mean they can get sign off at 14:00 on Fridays, but the project she was just assigned to is way behind and is super stressful. I was thinking maybe taking her out for ice cream along the river would be nice. On the map, I noticed Beeman Creek County Park just north of the Hash so I figured this would be a cool new place to explore with the dogs before hitting the hash.

I spent the morning making Strawberry Jam which was good because I just used up the last of my Jam from last year the previous week. I've always had trouble with the Strawberry, and this year was no different. Writing this up a couple days later, and this batch still hasn't set as firmly as I'd like. Oh well. Try again next year...

After that, I had lunch and played a video game for a while before getting ready to head out around 16:00. I confirmed with J that she was signing off at 17:00 sharp so I figured I could drive up and hike around for about an hour, hit the hash and then be at her house a bit after she was done.

The drive to the park was uneventful, but when I found the park road, I was surprised to see instead of 'County' Park it was 'Town' Park. That could be an issue since dogs are stupidly not allowed at many of the suburban town/village parks. I didn't drive almost an hour to not go for a walk and with no one in the parking lot, I figured no one would even know. It looked like there were two paths, a regular hiking trail and a wider road-like path (probably used as a snowmobile trail in the winter). Since it was so warm, I figured we could go along the creek first and hopefully there would be a big pool somewhere where the dogs could cool off. Finding the creek, we found the banks were very tall and basically a drop-off so the dogs would not be able to get back up. They were smart enough not to go down there, but we eventually did find a spot they could access the creek. The trail in this section was not marked and was overgrown, but there was enough of a path to stay on course.

At one point, I thought I was being attacked by velociraptors, but stopping and looking around, I realized I had walked into a patch of Stinging Nettles. Their sting is not overpowering, but lingers and is unpleasant. Being careful to get around the rest of them, I had to endure a bit of stinging on my knee and shin for a while but it had faded by the time we got back to the parking lot. That trail had taken about 15 minutes to walk around so with plenty of time to spare, I walked down the other road/trail.

This one ended at a buried gas pipeline, but because this was still park land, I turned right and continued up the path along there. I saw some very orange and interesting flowers so I took a picture of them to identify later. The pipeline wasn't too overgrown or muddy, but we still had to navigate a few mudholes. We finally reached a spot that was completely covered with water and too big to just jump over. The dogs cooled off again as I tried to go around, but I could see it was a stream and where ATVs went, it was extremely muddy. Guess this is where we turn around!

Making my way back, J called me, excited to finally be signed off for the weekend and getting outside for a quick walk. Turned out she planned to meet her mom for dinner/drinks after work so my surprise was ruined, but I was invited to join them. However, with the dogs, it wouldn't have worked so we made plans for her to stop at my place after she was done hanging out with her mom.

Getting back to the car, we drove over toward the hash following the Phone GPS. On the way, I thought I saw something weird on Myka's knee so I pulled it off to look at it and found it was a tick. UGH! With narrow roads, I had to hold it, pinched between two fingers so it couldn't move, until I found a place to pull off. Crushing it between my fingernails, I found another tick on Myka and two on me. Thinking I got them all, we continued driving and found the Hash-Park. Pulling in, I was very happy to see there were no baseball or Soccer games going on so I was able to park easily. Since the hash was between the park road and the bike path, I left the dogs in the car while I walked over.

Using the Hashdroid app, I had a short GPS dance, but was able to get a good reading and some pictures. Walking back to the car, I checked myself again for ticks and found another two on the back of my knee. Town park notwithstanding, I don't think I'll be going back there ever again...I took the dogs out of the car one at a time to do another thorough check, but fortunately, didn't find anything else on them.

This is the end of a short Consecutive Hash which was started yesterday in the Buffalo Graticule.

After a year, this looks to be a Last Man Standing Expedition!

Photos

Jam is made!
Getting to the park, we had two choices. We hit this trail first.
Then we explored the road behind the gate (only posted against Hunting).
At the end of the road, I found this plant which I looked up when I got home. It's Butterfly Weed which is in the Milkweed family.
Made it!
View East from the Hash.
View North, toward the Hash-mobile.
View West, toward the road to get into the park.
View South, toward the soccer (for the non-Americans: football) fields. It was not a windy day, the winds must just be regular and strong from the West to make the trees lean like that.
Still able to grin as I didn't yet know I had more ticks on me.