Further explorations at the "End of the Earth"

Here you see where we went yesterday, and again today. Today's goal was to find where Stony Run Creek (running left to right on the left side of the map, then turning down about halfway to meet the river) enters the river. To get there, we had to repeat part of yesterday's journey through the jungle- following the south end of the soccer pitch, crossing that muddy stretch right at the corner, and following that wooded "finger all the way to the end.

Of course, that was "plan 2" as far as achieving our goal. the original plan was to wrap around the corner and follow it that way. But this is all one big mud flat...



...complete with all the tracks you'd want to find.








So it was that we quickly decided to hug the "finger instead, working our way until we finally saw the creek...



..and then got up to it.

Right there Scrappy made an executive decision that we would have to brave "the finger" once again to reach our goal. Believe me when I tell you, this is no easy feat. Unlike the mainland woods, there was not a convenient "trail" to follow. It was a fight with every step, until filally we reached our goal- "the end of the earth".

This was hugely mucky, and after trying to convince action dog that muck was not in my further plans, we made our way back whence we came. We learned that once you get off the tip of the "finger", there is a rise where the going is much easier, though nothing like the trails that we are used to. We came back up to the soccer field, where Scrappy felt the need to go after the geese that have taken over the field just north of the IPFW pitch...

...and on the way home, we ran into a doe just at the edge of the Plex parking lot's north edge. I tried to capture it on film, but you know how that goes with our camera...

Thast little white dot is her butt bouncing out of sight once Scrappy finally noticed and tried to chase her.










We also got to see a couple of hawks fight over some unfortunate meal-sized rodent.