Urban Wilderness Areas – Page 3 – State of Wilderness

Southern Idaho’s First Disappointment

Okay, so back with the continued adventures of a road trip out west. In our story, it is now July 15, and our intrepid explorers have left the Salt Lake City area, sans kids (they were now with their dad for a few weeks) and half a day behind. The plan, my friends, was to reach Pocatello, Idaho by lunch time. We were supposed to have plenty of time to stop by a wilderness area southwest of the city, make a quick find on this grandfather cache, maybe spend a couple of hours exploring Craters of the Moon National Monument, have Taco Time for lunch (again), then drive towards Missoula and find a place to camp for the night. Well, I didn’t regret spending so much time at the Potters Pond area, but there is always a trade off.
In this case, the time we spent dawdling around in Utah’s National Forests meant time we didn’t have when we finally got to Pocatello. So, we never actually made it to these places here. We didn’t take these pictures. These pictures are taken by people who actually FOUND Southern Idaho’s First cache. Not like us.

This was our experience; we pulled up at Pocatello, finally, around seven at night. The cache description, as it is on many of these very old geocaches, does not really describe what kind of experience the hider is going to have, or give any particularly helpful directions. This is the entirety of the cache description (for those who didn’t click on the above link):
My GPS reported 13.2ft accuracy after 10 minutes of averaging.

Southern Idaho’s FIRST! This is an easy stash with an awesome view of Pocatello, Idaho and it’s surrounding mountains. There are several roads leading to the stash, I drove to within 100ft in my Jeep. Any decent 4×4 could almost drive right to it. Have fun.
So, given that, I was under the impression that this was like a park and grab. After all, we have a pretty decent all terrain vehicle. There were a couple of things I didn’t account for, though, that did not work in our favor: the cache was actually located within the boundary of a park, which had a gate with a sign on it that said the gates are locked at “dusk”. What time is that, exactly? We had about half an hour, maybe an hour tops until the sun went down, and although we had all our camping supplies with us, we didn’t particularly want to spend the night locked in the park. Also, the “roads” weren’t entirely clear, particularly which one of the rocky, rugged trail-type “roads” the CO meant that took you straight up to the cache. We tried a couple of approaches.
The last approach MIGHT have been the right one, but it was quite a ride just to get about halfway up, and then suddenly the rough road looked like it went straight up, too steep for me. Jason and I had a bit of a disagreement over whether or not to go further, because he felt certain he could drive the Subaru UP there, but I was too scared to make that drive. I finally just got out of the car. If he was going to try that, I was NOT going to go with him…I would walk, instead (there are times he is more risky than I am…like when it comes to off-roading etc). But it was still like a mile to the cache, if I am remembering right. There was no way we had time to walk up there and back in time to get out of the gates before dusk.
So we had to surrender the attempt. It was so disappointing. Now it was almost dark, and with a sigh of defeat, we chose to camp at the closest camping area in town: the neighborhood KOA. I also found this campsite to be disappointing and depressing. It had little redeeming beauty; just gravel roads, loud RVs, and scanty grassy areas to set up tents in the middle of the suburban landscape. I made a pasta dinner over our camp stove while Jason set up camp. I thought that in the morning, we would have gotten some insight on the road in and feel inspired to try again, but when the sun came up, Jason didn’t feel like it, and it was probably just as well, because we needed to make up some time. The one redemption of this stop was that we saw both the sunset and the sunrise at this camp, and in the morning as I was cooking breakfast, I noticed that in the tree right above us, a mother robin was bringing her three little chicks breakfast. I saw their yawning little beaks reaching for her, too cute.
We packed up and headed out before the office was even open that morning, headed northwest towards Missoula, Lolo Creek, the Sawtooths, and Orofino, Idaho – day of vacation highlights. This is where we will pick up again when I next have time to put it all down.

San Marcos: Purgatory Creek Natural Area and Prospect Park

I think I am turning green after this weekend..green with envy over this sweet, sweet setup my best friend growing up has got going on over there in the smtx. Not only does she have this great big yard that is part elevated open green space for the kids to play/part wilderness, but she also has this super awesome natural area walking distance from her house that offers a “greenbelt” with nature trails and the chance to experience an endangered species: the Golden Cheeked Warbler. This little bird has experienced so much habitat loss of the places it likes to nest in – tall juniper and oak woodlands – because of urban development that it hasn’t got a lot of places left, but this greenbelt is a protected space to hold back just a bit of this prime real estate for this brightly colored little bird to lay its eggs.

We didn’t see any of the warblers out during our two forays into the natural area over the weekend, but perhaps they were busy doing their nesting thing, which extends until the end of this next week. We might have heard them; there were unidentified bird sounds going on around us. Truth be told, we didn’t stop much to lift the binoculars, because we were too busy watching the rocks on the trail and/or our phone/gps to see where the geocaches were in the park. We were excited about the chance to see them, though, the opportunity that could happen at any time.

We did see a bit of other birds, butterflies and bees on our walks, as well as whole herds of mossies (that we could have done without – but the air was humid after a well-needed rain so that is just as well).

To be fair, I am not really feeling envious as much as I am feeling motivated to find a situation like hers. We were inspired enough to draw out some plans for our yard to allow more outdoor appreciation time in our own space. We really liked sitting on my friend’s porch on adirondack chairs watching the numerous birds flitting and flying about the trees and cacti in their yard. Several common nighthawk (#89) searched the tops of the trees for food in the evening, and in the morning, sparrows and cardinals, as well as other birds sang bright little morning songs. We saw our first hummingbird of the year flitting around a flower in her neighbor’s yard (I am not sure what species it was; it was too fast to identify). We want to build on the bird bath/bird feeder concept at our own house to draw them into our yard like that, although it certainly won’t be as spectacular as her yard is.

Of course, they also have the San Marcos River so close to their house – another reason to be jealous. We all loaded up the tubes and took them down to spend about an hour floating along. We saw some ducks on the river. One was a drake who stood up tall and stretched his wings, and I have been trying to figure out what he was. He looked like a Mallard but he was mostly black, and I am wondering if it is one of the Mallard x Black Duck crosses “they” talk about occasionally. There was a female with chicks that was possibly a female Wood Duck.

The river was very clear, clean, and cool. My youngest kept wanting to get off his tube and swim in it near us, and we let him do that sometimes when it was convenient for us. I felt the urge as well, and at the end, I did get to take a swim, but mostly to try to catch up to my oldest one, who had gotten ahead and needed to be told to stop.

There was so much good outdoor adventure on our trip, and some little places here and there that called to us that we didn’t have time to explore, so we do plan on going back. We also had a really nice time visiting with my friend Mari and her family, and the kids got along really well. I have already been looking at our calendar to see when we could fit in a return trip (although it probably won’t be until next year). If we go there again in March through May, perhaps we can lay our eyes on those Golden Cheeked Warblers after all.

Pundt Park: What I Love About Forests

There’s a certain way the light falls in a forest that just makes my heart tremble with excitement. It’s a spill of sunlight across a swath of leaves gathered at the edge of a fallen tree, or the emerald green of moss creeping up a tree base. It’s rounding a bend in a trail and seeing a path, bright and warm with sun. It’s the mix of shadows and light playing across pine needles and forest debris.

Pundt Park offered all this and more last Saturday. This 380 acre park in Spring is part of the Spring Creek Greenway system, and offers a large system of multi-use and dedicated trails. That means equestrians, bikers, hikers and geocachers are all out there together on some trails, but not on all of them. Some of the trails go all the way to Jesse Jones Park from here. There are two pavilions and a playground, and plenty of forest to explore.

If you like Jesse Jones Park, you’ll like Pundt Park. The terrain is very similar. We want to go to Jesse Jones again next, but I want to come back to Pundt and explore. I spent most of my time talking to others in our group and playing trivia, and only spent about an hour out on the trail. What I saw was just a tease; a tease of what looks like a really great forest.

Spring Creek Nature Center Goings-On

There are so many reasons to love the Spring Creek Nature Center. Inside the center, displays dazzle young children with live and preserved specimens, coloring areas, quizzes, fun worksheets and nature journals.

Outside, there is the forest, which is practically enchanted; filled with lichens, mosses, big trees and little trees. Mud sucked at our shoes at some parts of the trail, while monarch butterflies fed at flowers at other parts. Birds trill and flit from branch to branch. Could have spent hours identifying species but only had a few minutes in between geocaching, hanging out with friends, having a picnic lunch, and learning in the center. Belted kingfisher was the new species of the day (#75 for the year). Eastern bluebird flitted from a feeder as we walked up. A ladder-backed woodpecker showed us his hidey-hole. The best part of the day we could have spent hours on, but had other commitments – Merriwether, a research chemist who spends his weekends exploring Houston’s edible plants, was teaching a (free!) class today on foraging edibles. We were able to stay for about an hour but could have listened all day. There were just too many things pulling at us – our friends who were going to meet us at the playground, the other friends we have promised to drop a kid off after, a child’s hunger for his sandwich, and a soccer game in the afternoon that all needed to be fit in there somewhere.

This was my third visit here this year, and still so much more I feel I want to see. Every second Saturday, there is a bird walk from 7:30-9. There will be another foraging class in the fall. And, there are always more caches to find and more birds to see.