Labor Day trip

 I decided last week, "Well, if I leave early in the day, and if I go to the more remote hiking areas, maybe Chickasaw National Recreation Area would not be too crowded for a quick trip out." Because I need time out, and I need to do things, and there are not a lot of things (yet) I am extremely comfortable doing indoors. 

I left here around 7:30. It was actually hazy/foggy and hard to see much of the way up (it is very humid here right now). I got up there around 9, longer than it normally takes but I had to drive carefully. (That was good, though, they were just opening the visitor's center and also the restrooms therein). The campgrounds were PACKED - I saw that as I drove by* and the swimming areas were already getting busy, I suppose it's a last-hurrah for summer, and it's close enough to OKC for people to drive down to it (probably about an hour and a half)

(*I am not big on camping, but I am especially not big on camping in a really crowded campground - with the noise of other people, and the smell of their cooking or campfires, and having to jockey for shower time in the bathhouse. So if I were going to a park distant enough I'd want to stay over night, I'd book a room in a lodge or hotel, where I had my own bathroom and an actual bed).

Anyway, the area around the visitor's center wasn't too bad early on.

I joked on Twitter (after sharing several videos of the various creek areas) that I am fundamentally a water Pokemon, and I periodically need the sound of running water.

I walked out to the springs

 This is Antelope Springs, the more natural of the two. Some years it goes dry; this year we've had a wet year so it flows pretty freely.

This is Buffalo Springs; it was "tamed" in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. It's pretty, you can see the outflow area. I don't know if these were ever used as "healing" springs (like the now-dry Bromide Spring was) or if they were just scenic.

Water striders (Hemiptera, family Gerridae, don't know what species). Also known as Jesus bugs because of their ability to "walk on water" (they exploit the surface tension of water and their very light weight). These are on Buffalo Springs; they're pretty reliably found there. 

Some plants:

 Inland sea-oats, also known as fish-on-a-pole, which is a really common grass found in open woodlands here.

Leavenworth eryngo, one of my favorite plants here. It looks like teasel or a thistle but it's actually related to carrots - there is a closely related but less-spectacular plant in the tallgrass prairies up north called rattlesnake master that has white flower heads without the bracts.

I THINK this might be Ruellia?

And a (blurry) fern. I joked on Twitter: "Ehrmagerd, FERNS" because these are unexpected; it's so dry here you don't often see them. This was out on the Dry Creek Trail, a loop trail that few people seem to take (so I like it - but it also goes through interesting landscapes):

Interesting old tree, probably a black oak of some kind - I didn't check what it was

there are lots of these little prairie openings. It's fairly dry prairie; I saw side-oats grama in there and also, I think, hairy grama.

Then I ran up to Bromide Hill for a bit. This was less fun because it was already crowded, and people are just....loud....now, I guess. 

Still I got some photos

Another less ideal thing about people: I'm seeing more litter in the park than I remembered. One of the rangers was asking a family not to drop their disposable masks out on the trail (and I saw her going through with a bag and 'grabbers' picking up trash). and I saw some litter up on Bromide Hill.

I grabbed a few pieces on my way back out and disposed of them but it's not enough to really make a difference:

I dunno. Litter just bugs me because it's one person putting a minor convenience of not having to pack their drink cup back out against the aesthetic benefit of everyone else. And of course litter tends to attract more litter; if everyone seems to be doing it, people think there's no point in NOT doing it.

I dunno. It's just another societal problem that also feels like it's indicative of a lot of other problems we have. 

I ran to the Sonic for a quick indifferent lunch (that I could at least eat in my car). Driving out I saw lots of family groups in the park having big picnics and cookouts and I admit I felt slightly sad that I didn't have one to go to. But I also remember now how often at those kind of things I kind of wound up off at the fringes with no one to talk to, even in my family (I am much younger than one set of cousins, somewhat older than another, and the same-age cousins and I were not always on the same wavelength). Maybe instead of bemoaning that I don't have a lot of human contact now, I just have to recognize I NEVER did?

 

I did go to the Chickasaw cultural center that the tribe co-runs with the NPS (they have some historical displays, and usually feature a Chickasaw artist or two - this time it was a photographer and a stained-glass artist) and I also bought a postcard to send to a friend who collects them and a nice birthday card for my niece's birthday in another month (I HAVE to make her pillowcases v. soon, maybe this coming weekend). I also used the "penny smasher" to make a smashed penny with a different design from the one I did before. 

And I went to the Tea and Spice Exchange and got some more coconut oolong tea and a few other things. 

Driving back was not so great - I took a wrong turn and wound on a road that was unpleasant to drive on and wound up taking a half hour longer to get home....