A Nice Day Trip

Brombeere has been working on a quilt for one of her daughters for the last while.  They have been talking a lot about the material and pattern and so it came to the point where Brombeere needed some very specific fabric to move forward with the quilt. She had checked the local fabric shops she normally shops at but hadn't found what she was looking for. So she checked a couple of shops near by she doesn't normally shop at but still hadn't found what she wanted.  But, in talking about what she was looking for with one of the people at one of the shops, she learned of a little store quite a ways away that specialized in the kind of fabric she was looking for.  So she called them and described what she wanted and they said they had some that would probably work.  So off we went, across the state to see if it actually would work.

But I digress.  This isn't about quilting today.  It turned out that this little shop is near a state park we've been thinking about visiting.  So we decided that since we were going to be so close, we'd make the trip to the park while we were there.

I had looked at this park online previously and studied the maps enough to see that there were some nice looking trails through the park.  I had actually thought it might be fun to take our bikes to the park and ride around, which is the best way for me to explore places like this.  These were designated, maintained trails through the park but still, you can only tell so much from maps.  One of the things we learned from our visit is that some of the trails are paved and would be good to ride on, but most were not.  Some were pretty narrow and would be difficult to ride on a recumbent.  Good to know.

We also learned that there were a number of hills throughout the park.  Hills make pretty scenery but they can be difficult on a bike, for me, at least.

Not real bad hills, but enough to make it a challenging place to ride here and there.  Still, while we were there we saw an older lady riding a two-wheeled recumbent around the park. If she can do it so can we. 

Driving and walking through the park that day we found it a very restful, peaceful place. We were there on a weekday, and its getting late in the season so there weren't many people camping; there were two camping areas and one of them was completely empty.  We didn't see anyone picnicking.  

Lots of flowers, and the leaves were just beginning to turn.  Brombeere even found a wild berry plant with mature, albeit small fruit on it.  It was very tart, but good.  Yum, wild berries.

So we spent a little time driving, walking, and looking through the park, enjoying the quite scenery.  A very restful way to spend a couple of hours.  And the good news was that the fabric Brombeere was looking for, that we traveled so far to find? Yes, the little shop had some that she felt would work wonderfully.  In fact, Brombeere, said she definitely would be back next time she was working on a bigger quilt that called for a wide piece of fabric.  A good trip all around!