Stream Me Up, Scotty!
Rock pizza for lunch, adobo chicken for dinner, and some live-streaming in between.
Streamrunning
Yesterday I took Athennia to Tyler State Park again for a "hike" an old high-school buddy and I used to do routinely: You park at the foot bridge, head for this little stream just across the creek, and just use the stream itself as your trail instead of the actual trails that everyone else uses. A few minutes in, you'll never know that you're still in a public state park, because you'll find no traces of the public or the state... and that's always a win in my book!
Rock Pizza
But, not so fast! This is strenuous stuff. You're gonna want to load up on rock pizza first so that you'll have plenty of energy. The woods provide just about any topping you could ever want, too...
Scrape some bacon bits and chives off this red and green Yule log...
Take a gamble on the mushrooms... or perhaps just splurge on one mushroom that's the size of your head.
Grab some fresh herbs growing out of a crack in a rock. (Pro tip: Call it a crevasse in a rock, and it'll sound like some gourmet French stuff they'd charge double for at a restaurant!)
Just remember: Some mushrooms can kill you very easily. That's why it's nice to have friend who's a master plumber!
Plumbers basically spend the majority of their time preparing to fight Bowser; so, they know the ins and outs of mycology...
"Are we still in the park? Or have I wandered into my GMail account's spam folder? And, oh hey; what about that purple mushroom over there with a skull on it!?"
"I wouldn't recommend that one."
Welp, sometimes your plumber friend is on vacation and doesn't answer the phone. But sometimes, Bowser isn't an immediate threat, because he's out go-karting or playing tennis with Donkey Kong...
(And sometimes, you use a picture to tell a funny story, but it actually just depicts Athennia talking on the phone with Riley before we got into the hike proper.)
...But then, we were off!
Leaving It All Behind
The scenery was beautiful...
The lack of pretty much any other people, just as much so...
Carnage
There was a lot of carnage—some from the recent storms, and some from well before them...
We came to what first appeared to be an impasse, but found a way through...
Wildlife Sightings!
I found this little den beneath some tree roots and knew there had to be something hiding out in there. Sure enough, it was a Chick-fil-A cup, right there in it's natural habitat!
It appeared to be sleeping; so, I did my best not to disturb it...
Athennia found these little guys...
Believe it or not, "fuzzy little white things" isn't the technical term for them. They're officially called Asian woolly hackberry aphids, because that's so much easier to say.
And apparently, they love to dance...
Halfway Point?
We'd walked a long way; but, it had been such a blast so far! Should we keep going?
Yeah; we kept going...
The Canyon
There's a full-on canyon in the middle of Tyler, for those who bother to look...
Ahtsy-Fahtsy
I've conceded that Athennia puts a lot more thought into her angles and subject matter than I do; so, I tend to handle more of the "macrophotography" now and let her handle the "microphotography."
She captured some incredible artistic shots...
The Road Not Not Taken...
It turns out that rock pizza is mostly empty carbs; so, we were famished by the time we reached another impasse—which we actually couldn't have crossed without risking coming out covered in ticks anyway.
We decided to backtrack a bit and hop on an actual trail instead of parkouring through the creek all the way back to the car...
Linnertime
Fortunately, the universe saw fit to put a Qdoba in the Summit Square shopping center just a couple miles down the road from the park; so, we managed to fill our stomachs with delicious food before we died of starvation. (It was pretty dicey for a while though: It could've gone either way.)
We chatted with the store manager Larry—who, it turns out, was looking for somewhere new to take his young sons besides the same old stale bike paths near his house all the way out in Norristown.
Well, my man; you asked the right people at just the right time! We're fresh off a fantastic hike we just did about 30 seconds up the road. Wanna see some pics?
The food (and the company) was top-notch!
And, since Athennia and I tend to pass right by here when traveling back and forth between houses, this is officially "our" new Qdoba :)
...And then, of course, it was time to go home to meal-prep for the week and wind down another weekend...
