monocacy way

Since Pam is working again, and the D&L trailheads are getting further away, we have started doing one walk a week on the D&L. The other will be close to home to get to work in time. 

Today Lisa joined us. Lisa gets more distracted than I do, because she's a photographer. Pam made her leave her camera/phone in the car. It must have been torture.

We began at the Illick's Mill parking lot, and headed straight down the nature trail. At the railroad tracks we turned right, crossed them, and entered the woods. We pretty much immediately came upon a meadow with hand-built shelters.

Further down the trail we found that someone ... a hobbit perhaps ... attached a handle to the tree. It makes it easier to get inside I guess. But it was high. Were was the hobbits ladder? Then we found another really interesting mushroom that looked like a flower growing out of the tree. Maybe it's a fairy house?

Then we found some TP on a tree. It was creek side and the large area was free of weeds. I'm fairly sure that at some point it was an encampment for homeless people. But there was no fire circle, which was odd. 

By this point we had reached Burnside Plantation and used the path on the lower side of the property.  It was shortly after Burnside when we began to discover a lot spotted lantern fly nymphs.

At Union Blvd we reached the trailhead before the city. (Yes, it is next to an entrance ramp for the highway. No, it is not the first time I've seen this.) Turn right and you walk into the historic district/Johnston Park and ultimately to Sand Island. Turn around, and you go back to where you started. It's an out and back but you can make it a little more interesting. For example when we reached Burnside we went up into the plantation and walked thru it before rejoining the trail.

On the way back we decided that there was so many dead ones that someone had sprayed something. But there was plenty of live ones. Pam aggressively fought them. Sometimes slamming her hand into a tree. Black ones are slow. The little red ones are quick. Not as quick as adults, and they can't jump quite as far.

When we reached the railroad tracks we took the nature path along the creek. Many of the areas that in the past eroded away were not an issue. People just made a new path, further inland. It's narrow. When we returned to the lot, we crossed the street and went into the park and made the loop around the park.

Miles/Steps:    3.6 on my phone app. I forgot my FItBit.

Bathrooms:      I didn't check if they were open

Wildlife:           chipmunk, bunny, pileated woodpecker, mockingbird, robins, squirrels
Weather:          88, 78% humidity, overcast to sunny. 
PPE Found:      None 

SLF:                 We killed both black and red nymphs. At least a dozen. There were corpses galore on one section of the trail.