After a big of Drive-O trying to find the correct road to the boathouse, we got there at 11:48, and quickly got set up for registration. Wife and kids were planning to do the yellow course, while I wanted to do the Orange, and then, Red, just in time before the meet closed.
The day was not oppresively hot, and the park seemed to have a nordic flavor, with some evergreens lining the roads. With the park mostly forested, there were plenty of beech trees, some mossy earth banks, and beautiful meadows with tall grasses and wild flowers.
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In the Orange course, going from 2 to 3, I opted to go back to the paved road, pass the ravine, and take the wooded area from there. For control 4, lost time trying to find it. Eventually, I found the trail, and realized I overshot it by 80 meters. Going from 4 to 5, chose to take an easy route of following the trail to the clearing, then from the corner of the clearing taking a series of trails. Trying to locate 6 was definitely my biggest mistake. Completely overshot it, and had to back up the stream considerably. Looking for 10, for some reason I was looking for a spur. The clue symbol was "Reentrant", which looks like a spur.
Lost about 2 minutes, while my eyes were focusing on only spurs. Then, found the orange blip on my retina, descended on the reentrant, and said to myself, "this is not a spur". Now that I think about it, the spur symbol has a straight line AND a protuding curve.
Going from 11 to 12, chose to run the clearing. It turned out, it was tall wildflower grass, 2 meters high. It was rough. Not runnable.
In the Red course, I was pretty tired, and said to myself, this is going to be more relaxing. Halfway from 2 to 3, saw the marsh, and felt pretty confident. Then, ended up on a trail and realized I veered to much to the South. From there, went North and saw it right away. On going to 4, recognized some of the terrain in Orange, and in particular that course's control 9. Looking for 6, many people had problems. For some reason, I found the small marsh in the woods 200 meters West of it, and from there, saw the thick vegetation, set compass to NE and just got lucky, the control appeared right in front of me. Lost some time on 7 as I prematurely looked for it on the edges of the hill. 8 was a nice location, seeing these clearings in the middle of the woods is neat. In going from 10 to 11, because I was very tired and just wanted sure trails, chose to go along State Road. I completely missed the trail on the left (there is no trail, the vegetation ate it), and kept going North until i realized what a fool I was. Eventually, after bushwacking some, got to it.
Peculiar error in the clues, is that Orange clue for control 1 has "Cliff", when it should be "Fence". The two symbols are very similar...
Wife's report on Yellow: "finding 4, 5, and 6 was hard. But we found them".
At the end of the meet, we all exchange commentary. It seems that many that did Red had problems finding 6 and somewhat also 3.
It then started raining, and I took the kids to the Ledges trail nearby. We walked a bit, then took shelter under one of the ledges and waited the storm to blow off. We walked along the complomerate rock, slipped through a few of the cracks and slots, and once back to the car, the sun was out in full force. Which then prompted us to go back to the boathouse and rent a couple of paddle boats (ciclyst leg propulsion) for us four and we had one hour of fun in the lake. After that, a quick stop at the spillover area below the dam for a quick swim, and then drive back home.
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