Turn Around — Trail Bridge Out Ahead
April 13, 2025 — Day 8
Lums Pond State Park, Bear DE
It rained overnight so this morning we hung out waiting for the ground to dry out so we could go for a bike ride. But also waiting for Site 37 to clear out. Today is moving day, in the same park, see Thrash part 1 and 2.
One of the camp hosts came by around 10:30 to put the new tenants’ hang tags up. Paul asked if site 37 was clear and it was. So we headed on over, a mere 3,000 feet or so. One of our shortest moves! We can move quickly so then we had lunch. But now the winds were picking up. We had planned to ride along the Canal. It’s completely flat but Susan was thinking maybe the easy trail in the woods would be better and probably less be windy.
But first, we lapped the 1 mile loop around campground to get her used to her new e-bike under controlled conditions. We’d intend to leave that lap and head into the woods trailhead right next to where our RV was parked. When we got there we found a ranger walking up to our front door. We asked what they needed from us and it turned out we were in the wrong spot! So we both rode over to the new spots, left Susan there with both bikes (locking them up etc… is tedious, especially since we were heading right out again.) Paul walked back to Clifford, got it ready for travel, moved the Jeep off the site, drove to Susan, who then walked back to the old site to get the Jeep!
Here’s Clifford coming around the corner for the 3rd site of the day. (susan here: that’s a new record for us BTW.)
Once unpacked we headed out on the bikes. We were right next to the “easy” trail so we hit that first, arbitrarily choosing clockwise. It was mostly easy going but some sections were paved in large gravel, about 1″ to 2″ size, which is really hard to cycle on. (susan here: even harder when you don’t have all terrain tires and you have some terrain tires!) Then it got muddy, and muddier, so we turned around to where we got on the trail heading counter-clockwise. That was much nicer! First, we went into the woods by the lake.
Look at the smile on Susan’s face!
We soon crossed some farmers’ field, meeting someone walking their poodles, one regular, one miniature. The owner was working on “Stay” and they didn’t mind the interruption, the dogs loved the treats they were getting for “stay!” training. All was good.
Back into the woods and we met another person with another well behaved off leash dog. (susan here: we were on a streak!) To the left was water via a Dog Park and to right eventually wound you the long way ’round a parking lot. We should have chosen the parking lot.
We encountered bad dog people who had 3 dogs off leash. That’s fine and well within the rules as long as they’re under control of the people with them. They weren’t. All three charged up to Susan who, apparently wasn’t of interest to them. Susan explained that Paul has problems with dogs he doesn’t know (he’s been bitten). Two of the dogs spotted Paul and took off for him, aggressively trying to flank him. (susan here: they were aggressive and it’s important to note that while it’s an off leash area there are humans on foot or bikes or with other dogs on these trails). Paul got off the bike and keeping the bike between him and the dogs, ready to swing it in self defense. Fortunately the dogs had not read Sun Tzu’s Art of War and didn’t realize they outnumbered Paul and should have flanked him! The owners of those dogs were, shall we say, less than enthusiastic about calling them back and gave us lip “It’s the dog park!” These are trails for everyone, even if it goes thru the dog park. The asshole dog owner eventually retrieved them muttering to his friend “something something you’re in the dog park blah blah blah.” (susan here: Later I rode point behind Paul and would have had NO problem kicking one of them in the chops if it came at my feet.) BTW, Paul’s heart rate peaked at 157 during this encounter. Yikes!
In retrospect, Paul had hiked this area last year or the year before, going through this area, and didn’t meet a single person or dog.
We are not going back there.
We wanted to get back to the “medium” trail which was along the lake side with great view. Paul’s brother John had joined us on a previous trip and the three of us hiked part of it. We found that spot, then we found TheSign™.
We decided to ride to the bridge because, why not? And here is the bridge.
It didn’t look too bad, we considered crossing it! To get out of there it was uphill both way. This was more of a problem for Susan with her lead-weight e-bike than Paul with his skinny lightweight mountain bike. We both made it to the top.
But back to the paved road which we used to come in on, we got to watch a cricket match.
Paul used to love listening to the BBC on his way to work way back in the ’80s, he remembers being completely baffled, “India beat Pakistan 200 to 3 with 5 overs” and that made no sense at all. Later, he was in a bar in San Francisco attending a conference and a Brit explained it all to him and he understood it all. But, that was over a couple Guinnesses and the next morning, cricket was a mystery once again.
it took several attempts to find the easy trail back to the RV which was the same as the medium trail at that point, and we came to fork. Easy trail versus exit to the street. We had somehow missed the medium trail! Rather than backtrack we continued on forwards knowing we’d hit the “too muddy” spot ahead of us that we’d abandoned earlier but now we had miles of experience.It would probably be okay. Or we’d walk the bikes. Either way there was no going back!
Back at the house we had a quick dinner, Paul read his book, too rattled from those Bad Dogs, and Susan started a knitting project, having put the previous one in temporary time out.
