End of the Trail
A little over a week ago I did something at Sourland Mountain Preserve that I hadn't done before: I got to the end of its Texas Eastern Pipeline Trail all the way to Long Hill Road. This isn't an especially impressive hiking feat, but instead speaks to trail conditions: In the past there were spots where the vegetation would get pretty thick, enough that a machete would come in handy. And there were also spots where things would get wet enough that I wasn't sure I could wade through it even with my nearly knee-high rubber boots. But our surprisingly dry spring made these areas fairly easily passable. The trail is steep in parts, though near the end I seemed to be going up and down a lot. Besides getting to the end of the trail, it was a pretty good trip. Though most of the milkweed wasn't in bloom yet, a few early milkweeds and many of the dogbanes were in bloom, so there were lots of pollinators out there. And although there weren't a lot of odonates around, there...