A little bit of everything

I finally had a real field outing in what feels like weeks. I was out solo at a pretty big site close to home. I'm familiar with the area so I knew what I would be in for. The woods would have large trees with not much understory since it would all be eaten by deer and in the open spots it would like 100% invasive nasty thorny shrub species. This held true at this place.

The place is some sort of physical rehab center and I had to check in with the office. Thankfully I wasn't escorted around but the woman felt the need to tell me to watch out for the resident bear and that the deer were friendly (?ok??) and the sheep (double ???) were also friendly. I told her I was familiar with all and that I would be fine. I was on bear alert for the first hour and then after not seeing any signs of bears I mellowed out. But at one point I stopped to sit on the corner of a wall where two roads intersected. At first, the spot seemed fine but then it became stinkier and stinkier. I'm thinking if the bear was around it probably marked the spot and that's why it's so stinky. So I moved from that spot.

The site borders a large dammed lake with an old road around it. There's this fancy gate and some sort of sheep fountain. It was misting most of the morning but for whatever reason there are orbs in these first 3 pics. I would like to think they are ghosts but it's probably reflections off the mist. This road took a lot of work to put in with perfect rock walls on both sides. And everything is still in pretty good shape. It was so steep to the lake I couldn't even see it most of the time. All I saw was a slope covered by wisteria and was wondering how I would ever be able to hang flags down there in the right spots...anyone got mountain climing gear?

I had a few near falling situations on the steep slopes that are covered by rocks ranging in the size from gravel to the fist sized. You can see how steep the woods are in this pic.

Above is the big dam. I ventured out onto a small part of it and tried not to think about how high it was. This lake sure is going to be beautiful once the leaves change color on a sunny day.

Here's some ancient farm trailer complete with broken fan and other junk.

Old School

One of the benefits of having a job that involves the outdoors is stumbling upon old stuff. Large farms usually have at least one farm dump where it's a treasure trove of old bottles and other goodies. I found this old building today while turtling. It's actually a pretty small building...about the size of my kitchen. I have no idea what this building is for. Right now a very small stream runs through it. It has 2 windows and 2 doors. One door is up high..as if this building had 2 floors? Next to this building I thought at first was a root cellar...but maybe it was later converted to a well house. All very Blair Witch Project. Although I was alone, it was not dark so all was good. Even though this building was choke full of old tires, I'm happy the kids didn't get to it with their graffiti and beer cans.

Here's an archway from perhaps the old house.

Lastly, the biggest and possibly the newest was a big barn. It had a lock on it otherwise I'd be all up in there.