Since Barry and I worked on clearing the roads up in the forest yesterday Barry said he was coming by for a dirt bike ride today. He arrived about 11 just as the day was warming up enough to make it real nice.
We took off for the hills.
And had to cross the highway and go through this gate to get onto our property.
Looking for shrooms
We rode up to this spot first and stopped here to see if we could find any morel mushrooms in the grasses, but no luck.
Rest area
After riding around for about an hour we stopped here on this ridge top which is the highest one in this area, for a break. It has a nice view.
We rode around some more covering most of our property and my cousin’s place too.
Indian spring
When we went by Indian spring we stopped for a drink of water and to check the spring’s water flow, which was good.
Steep stuff
Barry wanted to ride on some steeper stuff than I wanted to ride on so I left him and went on home while he enjoyed himself on the steep stuff. He has a much hotter dirt bike than I do so steep stuff is easier for him than it is for me and I’m old enough not to need to do the steep stuff like I did when I was younger. The stuff we already rode on was steep enough for me.
When Barry came back down to my house we sat around and shot the bull for a bit and he left for home.
Looking for old trails
I needed a good nap which I did and eventually jumped back on the dirt bike and went back up into the forest to do a hike. I wanted to check out a ridge top for old trails.
Animal trails that is as they make pretty good ones in the steep hills that aren’t usually too steep. The animals I’m talking about would have made these trails a long time ago.
There aren’t as many animals around these days so the trails are there but one has to look hard to find them.
Anyway I rode on up to the ridge top and and parked the bike and started out on my hike going up along the ridge top looking for signs of the old trails.
I started off going up the hill as I couldn’t see any old trails yet, going through here.
When I got to a steep part I started looking around the sides of the ridge for the animal trails as animals like to make the trails in the easiest places to walk and still travel the ridge tops.
Found an old trail
I found one here although it’s hard to see as not much has used it in a long time.
The trail went through here which I followed.
I was following the trail here when I noticed it went right through the big old log there that looked like the log was about ready to roll down the hill so I had to be careful, just in case
The log was more stable than I thought so I worked my way over it and continued on the old trail.
I continued on through this area and was losing the trail which was ok as it wasn’t a steep area.
Eventually I lost the trail and had to hunt for it some more going through here where I think I picked it up again. That big old tree fell down not too long ago.
I lost the trail once or twice more and got to the end of the ridge top so started back picking up the trail through here.
I was trying to follow the trail back to the dirt bike as this part I’d missed on the way out and had gone up the steep part. The trail goes to the right of that big tree and the dirt bike is getting closer.
Following the last part of the old trail though here I came out right at the dirt bike which was good as the trail is much more level than where I started out from the dirt bike earlier.
That old trail shows promise so I’ll have to hike it a couple more times to figure out exactly where it goes and then eventually I’ll likely start doing some work on it to improve it.
I headed on home and got there about 6:30 and was pretty beat so that was my day.
There are over a hundred pictures that are served up randomly every time you visit or change pages. They are of earlier pictures of interest and also some just to remind me of things.
A Sony AX33 4K, a video camera that takes stills too. What am I doing with that? I take pictures from my Kayak a lot. I found I was missing interesting shots, because my pic was being processed in my camera, before it would let me take another pic. Since I like to take what I call action stills, I bought this camera to take videos, that I could make stills out of, but, as a bonus, this camera also came with buttons to just take stills and that's what I mostly do, unless something is real interesting or too far away for my still zooms. My digilat zoom setting for video goes to two hundred x, and sometimes I need that, but usually, I only use the 10x lens zoom. Because this camera is HD and 4K, the quality has to be real good and it has a lot of stabilizers on it which really helps out a lot for taking pics on the water.
The other thing it has that is a must is a view finder and I had to buy Sony's top of the line cam to get it. This is a must for taking pics on the water, as you must hold the camera as still as posible and putting that eye piece to the eye forms a tripod with your arms that helps a lot. The eye piece is also a must as it works way better than a LED screen to see what you are taking a picture of in the daylight as the LED screens wash out easily in sunlight.
I also have another video camera, a Canon VIXIA G30. I use them both to mostly take stills. The Sony takes higher resolution stills than the G30. That was a bit of a disappointment as I bought the G30 to replace an older camera I dunked in the river, but then had to buy the Sony to get higher still picture resolution that the G30 was lacking.
