THE TRACK

Paul and I went on a pretty neat little hike today. We were on the trail by 6:45. It was already 73 degrees by the time we started headed to 81 by the time the romp was over. Humidity, well summer in the south, right? It was 90% when we started and we sliced off some air with my Swiss Army Knife when we wanted to breathe. Mercifully, my shirt was soaked in about 15 minutes. I drank a liter of water on the trail and two quarts of Gatorade afterwards.

Pretty uneventful hike with the exception of two guys with no vehicle walking in front of us just as we got started. They were in long Khaki pants and on carried a plastic grocery sack. With the exception of the wildlife we saw, we mostly walked and yakked.

The trail is a farm road with row crops on either side. It is a management area with a permit box and we saw plenty of shotgun shell casings so I imagine more than one dove has met their maker there. The trail runs parallel to the Tennessee River in the area just downstream of Wilson Dam on Pickwick Lake. It is a very gentle and almost imperceptible descent. I am really not sure about the discrepancy between the elevation numbers reported in the chart. One would think on a there and back course the GPS would register the same. Someone is maintaining the road with railroad ballast rock in the washes. Watch your ankles.

We saw several turkeys on the back of the first soybean field on the north as we made the first big turn. There were lots of puddles this morning because of the soaking rains of the last few days. Stopping very long will put you on the mosquito menu. As we got to the end of the road we saw a glimpse of a pretty large bird with a gray white underbelly. It might have been an eagle since we saw a nest on the transmission tower at the beginning of the romp. On the way back a lone juvenile Coyote stopped for a while to check us out. We saw more turkeys on the way back and a hen in the bushes clucked at us for a minute or two.

I am not sure if the mystery grocery sack men ran off the wildlife because we never saw them again after they turned the first corner on the trail. We were not especially quiet due to the rocks on the road. I thought however, we would see more wildlife.

See the Eagle nest on top of the transmission tower