It looked like it was going to be a sunny, warm spring day, but not too warm, making it perfect for a nice long walk in Lake Malone State Park. We were really looking forward to trekking in the natural setting that we find in this relatively unknown Kentucky State Park.
It takes us about 20 minutes to drive the 13 miles to the Park parking lot from our house, even although it is not even a mile from our cottage if we could paddle across the lake in our kayak.
I had checked ahead of time on the web site for Lake Malone State Park to make sure the Park was open and the trails were open too. I even called Theresa at the Park to verify.
We made sure we sprayed our ankles and the cuffs of our trousers to prevent picking up ticks while we walked through the trail, because, as you may know there are an over-abundance of ticks, carrying lime disease, in this region of Kentucky.
We had walked the Mountain Laurel Trail before and we thought we knew the area well enough. One mile and a half should not take more than an hour and a half, so we did not take our water bottles with us, but left them in the car.
We were well-covered, long sleeves, long pants, hats with brims and we had our trail sticks and our iPhones,
It is so easy to access the trail from the parking lot so we set off along the side of the lake with the lovely vistas across Lake Malone. We even spied our cottage and gave a little wave as we plodded along. We are quite used to one or two-mile walks, but we do not go too fast.
We paused many times along the way to examine some of the plants and especially the different kinds of moss we encountered. The Mountain Laurel is beginning to flower and will be out in force very soon - usually May.
Part of the beauty of the Mountain Laurel Trail, is the towering, colourful cliffs on our left as we walk on the trail. Some of the rocky outcrops are so unusual. We knew the trail would take us back to the campgrounds and our car in the parking lot.
I guess we were not paying too much attention, enjoying many of the areas with which we were familiar, crossing the creek bed and continuing along the trail. This trail is rough, but it was also cluttered with broken branches and trees were down across our path. We had to clamber over these and in and out of rock crevices.
We began to think we had been on the trail a long time and still had not come to the stretch of grass that led to the campgrounds.
We came upon a sign that read “Trail End” and another that pointed the way to the “Trail” to the right”. We did not remember seeing these signs on previous visits and thought they were helpful. Therefore, we took the trail to the right and started climbing up a steep incline.
After another half hour or so of climbing up very rough terrain, we began to descend to a previously never seen creek splashing over some large flat rocks with pools and sparkling little water falls.
There was a brand new bench situated so that it overlooked a lovely view in this remote spot. We thought - a bench! we'd never seen a bench on the trail before - Great, we can have a nice rest here.
We sat down to take a breather, looked around us at the beautiful spot and realized
Oh no! However will you get found! Please let me know when the next episode will be published.