In Tyler Straits
Resisting temptation, picnicking at the pub, and marco polo
We've had an eventful last few days...
Riley decided she'd like to go back to her natural hair color and asked Athennia to help her dye her hair to get rid of the black. Of course, going from jet black to light blonde in one shot tends to be tricky; so...
Taylor turned 18 this week and is... apparently all grown up now.
That's going well so far: She called the day after her birthday, insisting that she needed Athennia to hand over her birth certificate immediately (so she could go get her nose pierced right away).
Then, when Athennia explained that this would have to wait—since we were half an hour away at my place and just heading out to dinner—Taylor melted down and accused her of "holding her documents hostage."
If you're truly too myopic to see that, I'd recommend getting your prescription checked along with your attitude.
For the record, Athennia did end up delivering the birth certificate later that night—along with everything else Taylor had left behind when she moved out back in June.
We wouldn't want to be accused of holding any of it hostage!
Dinner at the Qdoba in Horsham that night was, incidentally, the worst experience we've ever had there by far: The Beavis and Butthead duo working the counter had shortages of literally every ingredient as they fumbled their way through our order—and, as much as I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to them just being blazed or something, I suspect they're just naturally that stupid.
Needless to say, we will be giving our patronage exclusively to the far-superior Langhorne location from now on :)
The highlight at the end of the evening was when we got home and caught a glimpse of the injured fawn whose fate we haven't been able to determine since we saw it in my neighbor's yard way back in early September...
It's finally matured enough to lose its spots, and it was traveling with a buddy (and a juvenile buck who had already run into the shadows).
And then came the weekend, which meant it was hiking time!
Tyler Park, Round One
Post + Rules = Posted Rules
Anytime you have to interface with the state, you know there are going to be rules, rules, and more rules.
You probably came to the park to experience nature; but first, you'll be greeted by this sign putting a damper on your hopes of getting in a few hours of hardcore snowmobiling on a ~60-degree day in mid-October...
We failed to see how NO VEHICULAR TRAFFIC was at all ambiguous; but, they felt the need to expound further on exactly what they meant by it...
It turns out, if you read the fine print, they meant no vehicular traffic.
Weird. Why didn't they just say so in all caps?
So, we dejectedly left our all-terrain motor-scooter snowcycle-mobiles in the car and continued on foot. We made it about 30 yards...
So many rules—even before you get to the bottom and think you've reached the end. Then you get around to the other side and realize they merely ran out of post space and you're only halfway through the anthology!
Miraculously, we finally managed to find some beautiful, unperverted nature!
...But our joy was to be short-lived: We hadn't been there five minutes when we started spotting warning signs cautioning us that our lives were in danger!
This is absolutely, positively not a designated picnic area: It's a park!
Would you believe that some people would be so reckless as to have an illicit picnic... in a park?! I immediately dove in front of Athennia in case someone was sitting on a blanket and eating sandwiches nearby. I told her to use me as a human shield if anything happened, and not to look back or stop running until she got out alive.
Looking back, I honestly still don't know how we got out of there in one piece!
But, we weren't out of the woods yet... mostly because we weren't really even in the woods yet.
The Danger Dam!
Sure enough, fate struck again mere moments later...
There was no colon after the word danger. You know, as in, Danger: Dam Ahead.
This naturally left us wondering just what the heck a danger dam was. And so, not only was there some terrible thing awaiting us ahead; but, we wouldn't even recognize it when we came to it... thereby making it doubly unsafe.
We foolishly marched onward without even calling our loved ones to say goodbye, and found a lovely little dam that was, perhaps, the Danger Dam's... infant son?
On the other hand, I can't begin to count how many times I've hiked here and encountered kids as young as four exuberantly using the dam as a water slide over and over again without issue; so, I'm relatively confident that delta-P isn't an issue here on an ordinary day.
I'd personally like to see a sign that says, "Hey, there's a dam ahead. Remember that things you don't understand can kill you, and know that hydrology engineers recommend staying away. You're ultimately in control of your own life though; so, do what you want."
Temptation?
We finally got out of Ruleville and into nature in all its splendid glory.
It didn't take long before we encountered something about as dangerous as illicit picnickers...
I was waiting for the slithery little guy to try to tempt us—like,
Hey guyssssss; you should ssssssseriously sssssssswitch to Apple productsssssss...
But, he pretty much wanted nothing to do with us and just went on his way before the Danger Picnickers showed up. <shrug>
Shortly thereafter, we came to a pretty steep slope that I wanted to check out. Athennia stayed behind because her back and shoulder had been bothering her all morning; but, I found a stunning creekbed where the landscape had eroded all the way down to bedrock...
The smoothness of the rock and the slipperiness of the moss made it feel like I was trying to walk up a luge track: Even with the heavy-duty tread of my still-almost-brand-new trail sneakers, I was sliding all over the place and narrowly avoided several falls that could've been pretty unpleasant.
Lunch
We were getting mighty hungry by this time; but, since a park is no place for a picnic, we'd have to go elsewhere if we wanted to munch on some sandwiches.
We headed to the Acme right up the road in Newtown and got a pair of deli sandwiches on sourdough pretzel bread... along with some fried chicken and potato wedges.
Acme has a little bar area where people with sadder lives than ours apparently go to drink alcohol...
Nobody was feeling so down in the dumps that they were here to drink at 2:30 on a Saturday afternoon though; so, I guess that's a win for society.
And, here's a classic "did you just take a picture of me?" look... Followed by an "I love you so much" look :)
...And some metaveillance for good measure.
Tyler Park, Round Two
Then it was time to head back to Tyler to continue our hike. There was another trail I wanted to check out, but getting to it would require us to take one of the paved asphalt paths on which everyone else in the park also tends to travel.
We've been blasted with two years' worth of agitprop insisting that other people are filthy and contagious—and today, we learned that everyone we encounter could also be a closet picnicker—so, we really weren't thrilled about having to mingle with a bunch of sandwich-munching monkeypoxers :(
Luckily, we ended up being right behind this guy—whom I dubbed "Turkish Delight" because it was so fortuitous having his "outdoor voice" to keep us company throughout his never-ending video chat: Otherwise, we would've had to endure pesky nature sounds for the entire walk.
Yech. Who wants that in a park?! Nature sounds should be illegal.
Not sure whether whatever you were speaking was actually Turkish; but, my God, were you a delight! I wish you'd go check out the Danger Dam, bud ;)
But, we hopped off the paved trail soon enough and got onto something a little less-traveled...
This trail was very muddy and more overgrown than we had anticipated; but, the scenery was well worth the risk of ticks, poison ivy, or picnicking bandits that might try to eat in our general direction...
There was a woman canoeing by herself—which was pretty cool, because I don't think I'd ever canoe by myself.
Props to you for that, lady!
...Then again, she could've been a mule moving product for one of the notorious picnicking cartels that smuggle enough egg salad over the border every year to kill every man, woman, and nonbinary seedless watermelon in America.
Shame on you for that, lady!
We came to a swampy area with a full-on bog. If my cousin had been with us, it could've been a Pete bog. But, he wasn't; so, it was just the regular kind.
Toward the end of the hike, we encountered a tree that isn't sure what it wants to be when it grows up... and another baby Danger Dam!!
And, don't forget the artsy shots. Those aren't illegal (yet); so, Athennia got some great ones...
Marco Polo
We returned to the Newtown Shopping Center in search of a place called Marco's Pizzeria that was allegedly somewhere behind Acme.
But, since this shopping center's the size of a small city—and neither of us had been there in well over a decade—it took us a few minutes to locate the place.
She probably checks for al Qaeda behind the shower curtain before she goes to the bathroom, too :(
We got Marco's to go and took it home to have dinner with Riley. (She wasn't in a "park" mood; but, what kind of kid's not ready to wolf down half a pizza at a moment's notice?)
The pizza was excellent... though I'd swear I had ordered a half plain, half sausage: I must've accidentally said, "\(\frac{11}{37}\)ths sausage, and please cut it like you're sloshed from hanging out drinking at Acme all day."
After dinner, we watched Riley play through most of Portal 2 before we made an impromptu trip to Barnes & Noble to load up on new books.
...And then it was time to exchange goodnight hugs and call it a day :)