Family

Happy Holloween

A long-overdue hike at Dark Hollow, and a day off from work to close out the month.

wintermute (Kevin)

Oct 31, 2024 • 10 min read

Vehicular Man's Laughter

I forget what day I heard the salvager towing Cherkoff's primary vehicle over on the main road last week; but this past Wednesday they finally came out and grabbed his truck from the back of the alley here as well :)

I don't know if this driver was a rookie, or what; but... mistakes were made, and it sounded like there might be some damage to Cherkie's little pickup chruck...

Ah. Still an ugly vista, but decidedly less so...

Holloween

The rest of the week was relatively quiet until Saturday—when Kitten, the Molerat, and I made a long-overdue return to Dark Hollow Park!

After seeing how dry Playwicki was last week, I knew this would be the perfect time to hike at a place that's normally 98.77% mud.

And I was right...

Compare today's conditions (left) to those of 15 October one year ago—when the path seemed to think it was the creek...

Kitten and I each photographed this log...

😲

"Ooh! I see log! I take picture!"

—Kevin's approach

🤔

"Hmm... how can I put some thought into my angle of approach and take an interesting and worthwhile shot?"

—Athennia's approach

Then I asked the totally-normal members of my totally-normal family if they would let me get a totally-normally picture of them for once...

Nah.

So, guess what? These are the pics that make it onto the internet instead!

Soon enough, we had arrived at the power lines...

What the heck is this—does Eli Whitney live out here?

With considerable trepidation (given how out of shape we are at the moment), we decided to climb the hill.

It's well over a 100-foot increase in altitude—as you can see by the fact that we're above the tree line and the utility poles up here!

Luckily there was nobody around when we reached the top... because we were fighting for our lives for a good two or three minutes until we caught our breath again.

If al Qaeda—or even a couple of tough fourth-graders—had been there, we would have been goners.

🤔

We should start carrying a club with us, just in case.

Athennia and I took virtually the same picture, just a minute or so apart...

And then it was onward into the corn field...

I found a feather—which my childhood told me would give me a cape and let me fly...

...but I couldn't figure out how to work it; so, we had to remain earthbound :/

Eventually, we popped into the woods...

I managed to snap one of my best pics ever...

Absolutely no editing, beyond a basic crop to make it 3:4 instead of 9:16 :)

We came across this old tree—where I took a picture of Athennia for scale (right) back on 25 September 2022 on our first ever visit to this part of the park...

And finally we went down to the creek. The... "auxiliary creekbed?" ...was bone-dry!

Compare that to two years ago...

No water at all until the peninsula where the auxiliary bed reconnects with the actual creek...

It's a leafy desert...

Compare, once again, to October of 2022...

...and to October of last year...

Even back in late May of this year, there was at least a bit of water...

We probably just missed the sweet spot for the changing leaves; but it was still gorgeous...

...and hauntingly desolate at times—which, let's be honest, a park called Dark Hollow should absolutely be ;)

Does Jason Vorhees live out here?

The Molerat picked him a flower, because she's emo like that...

After the park, we had plans to have dinner at my parents' house.

But my mom was making a mac and cheese taco/pizza bake, and that seemed like the kind of thing Athennia's gallbladder might have the gall to complain about; so we made a pit stop at SaladWorks...

...where we saw...

...The Club!

Blue cars are like catnip to car thieves. You can't be too careful.

🤩

Oh, wow! Is it 1992 'round these parts?

We totally could've used one of these to defend ourselves when we got to the top of the hill at Dark Hollow! (And another one to lock our steering wheel so nobody could steal our car while we were out in the woods.)

Then we continued onward to my parents' house and had a lovely dinner with them, Kelly, Steve, and the girls.

Ace of Clubs

That brings us to today—Halloween—when Athennia decided to burn the last of her personal time at work (since the clock resets today, with it being the two-year anniversary of her date of hire).

Riley had an asynchronous day of school, where she had work to complete but no set schedule; and Athennia and I decided to take a drive over to my parents' house so we could visit and I could water the garden...

🤔

Dark Hollow Park isn't the only place around here that hasn't had rain in 57 years now: Our garden's looking pretty arid as well.

Then we shot over to Qdoba to grab an early dinner; and now we're waiting around until it's time to take Riley over to Kassie's house later so they can go trick-or-treating together.

In the meantime, Athennia and I will probably just watch a few episodes of Psych and try to get to bed early tonight... because the three of us have a road trip planned for tomorrow!

😉

That's November territory though; so you'll have to wait and see where we're going.

Until then remember that—according to some random person in our neighborhood—Wu-Tang is forever...