Friday, November 12, 2010 - Hazlet State Park, Carlyle IL
< previous day | archives | next day >
Virginia Creeper, Red Rock, East Chatham NY, August 23, 2010
Distractions
My plan was to hit the road early this morning and beat feet for the Mississippi. But it didn't work out that way. It seems I got distracted by the iPad display at the Frankfort KY Walmart I stayed at last night and decided to buy one before I left {insert grin here}.
Nope - the 16GB WiFi model I wanted was not in stock. Ah, well. A quick check of the Walmart website showed some in stock at a Louisville store on the way to St Louis.
So I stopped by. Nope. Won't be in until next week. It seems Walmart's website includes merchandise on it's way - not just what is on hand. Go figure. Ah, well.
But wait. Maybe there is an Apple store in Louisville. Yup.
Night camp
Site 141 - Hazlet State Park, Carlyle IL
- One of the largest campgrounds in the Illinois state park system, Hazlet State Park is located on the largest manmade lake in Illinois. Eldon Hazlet State Recreation Area is a 3,000-acre site on the west shore of Carlyle Lake, a Kaskaskia River impoundment. The site is located 3 miles north of Carlyle and 2 miles east of Illinois Route 127 in Clinton County.
- Verizon cell phone and Broadband service are available here with a strong signal.
- Locate Hazlet State Park on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
Listening
As the poet Gary Snyder said so well, "Beyond all this studying and managing and calculating, there's another level to nature. You can go about learning the names of things and doing inventories of trees, bushes, and flowers. But nature often just flits by and is not easily seen in a hard, clear light. Our actual experience of many birds and wildlife is chancy and quick. Wildlife is known as a call, a cough in the dark, a shadow in the shrubs. You can watch a cougar on a wildlife video for hours, but the real cougar shows herself only once or twice in a lifetime. One must be tuned to hints and nuances." After more than thirty years of living in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and spending a great deal of that time out-of-doors, Snyder has seen the mountain lion on just a few occasions. One of these sightings was most unusual. Gary had been visiting a neighbor and was walking down from the nearby ridge to his home when he observed a cougar sitting near one of the windows of the house. The animal appeared to be listening intently as one of Snyder's stepdaughters practiced the piano.