I decided it'd be a Gulch day starting at the bottom. The heavy equipment is all over in the parking area and they seem to be done with the new work that goes up the hill. But I parked on the street to be sure.
The plants are growing like crazy in there and that's just one of the reasons I'm enjoying using the trekking poles. If you hold them upright just slightly ahead of your legs, they push everything out of the way.
Decided to climb all the way up to the top via the Northernmost trail. It was nice to be able to see the sky when I got up there.
And when I re-entered by the ball fields, I got what I think is my favorite across-the-gulch shot yet.
Lovely flowers.
This makes me want a fern. It's not really in the cards, though.
3.87 miles in 1:55, 10,855 steps, 396ft gain
I wasn't really planning on going back the same way I came like that on the Eastern side. I actually wanted to go down the center, but took a wrong turn and followed a path that I forgot goes in a loop. That's fine, though. It's one of my favorite paths there, and it gave me a chance to refresh my mental map. I was confused because I happened upon a shortcut I recently found that leads up to the big bike stunts area, but I was confused about how to get there via the regular way. That loop goes all the way around it and I forgot that.
Here's a shot I took of where they've cleared heading up the hill for the water main, when I arrived.
I decided when I got back to climb up and see how far it goes. Turns out it's all the way to a residential street up there, which makes sense, because the water main would service those homes.
It's hard to really convey how big it is, but you can see the road down below in this picture and it's pretty far away.
I'm curious what they'll do about that cleared part once the project is finished. It was a natural barrier before and it's not like you can just magically make everything overgrown again. My suggestion would be to create a new path for that neighborhood to use to walk down into the woods, but they might object to that. Obviously I'll be watching what happens.
I'm happy that I finally found a nice little frame for the two smaller drawings by
mischiefduck. They've just been leaning on the wall by the bigger ones for years now and would blow over all the time.
Friday's also air plant watering day, so here's what I currently have. I count 40 plus the piece of moss. Another 15 are on the way.
The shelves I recently put up in my room are now full of items I've found to put air plants in. A few are in the Etsy shop, but most of them aren't yet. There's no point in putting out tons of listings all at once, so I'll do one or two a week. Maybe.
I sent an update to the woman who sold me my first air plant to let her know that it's now a much more serious hobby for me and that if she ever needs any urgently and can't wait for shipping she can come to me. We ended up becoming Facebook friends, too.