Training Log Archive: Nadim

Hoyles Mill Conservation Park, MD. From the lake at the Soccerplex, I went out the power lines and after I jogging most of the way, I dived into the woods almost a mile later. I got into greener forests early on. I spent a lot of time tracking vegetation boundaries with my GPS. I finally reached the Little Seneca Creek, the main body of water running through the park. After getting around a particularly large area of deadfall and rough vegetation surrounding a reentrant system, I found open forest. A part of this had some large cairns spaced just far enough apart to fit on the map well. The area had a stone wall too. The areas around the water there had a lot of boulders and several small cliffs. Leaving that nice ares, I plunged into the deadfall and emerged still in light green to find a ruin. Given the location, probably no one had seen this one in +50 years. It was just a foundation. However, following the easier ways through the green brought me to another bigger one. A simliar jaunt found me a 3rd even bigger one with a cellar full of water and no easy way in or out. It turned out that I was near an old mill area that that I found a half hour later--perhaps the mill was the one giving the park its name. I sort of wandered back across more deadfall and found it wasn't that hard to cross. Eventually I got into an area I'd mapped earlier so I check and corrected alignments of boulders and cliffs. By the time I'd left it was starting to get dark.

From Northfield Rd., to Norfolk Ave., then back. I went out to get lunch for Max and myself.

From Northfield Rd., Peggy and I went for an evening walk. We were on the lookout for book libraries that people build for others. Peggy is adding them to our local Bethesda map so that one day we can set a course with them. We didn't find any on this trip but there's hope. We went out Jefferson St. to Roosevelt St., to Garfield Rd. to Madison St. to Heampstead Ave., to Greentree Rd., to Ridge Rd., to McKinley St., to Roosevelt St., to Garfield St. to Huntington Pkwy., to Custer Rd., to Northfield Rd.

Hoyles Mill Conservation Park, MD. I did some more field checking of the patches of forest adjacent to the old farm area and Schaefer Rd. As I'd found the previous week the forest in these areas tend to be very open and fast. There were some greener parts near a patch with stream tributaries but even that wasn't bad and had several good features. The really open forest had relatively (compared to the rest of the par) very few features and no mappable rootstocks. It will just be a joy to run through. There was more forest on this, the south side of the power lines, that I could see but didn't have time to get to. What I saw was predominantly very open too.

I was lucky to get out in between rains. Perhaps it's the wet weather but I was lucky enough to see another snake--this one bigger and in a derelict car that I was taking a waypoint of. Earlier, I'd spooked out another wild turkey and this one flew off.