Seneca Creek State Park is a place that I go to regularly. It is actually a part of one of my running loops that I can get on to directly from home. I typically run along the south shore of Clopper Lake, and on Mink Hollow Trail and the Greenway Trail, approaching and departing the park from the south.
You get a nice view of Clopper Lake and its shoreline through the trees when driving on Longdraft Road. The view tends to draw your attention (you might end up taking your eye off the road for just an instant😉), especially in the early mornings when the sunlight lights up the trees on the sides of the lake. From past experience, I know that this view can actually be somewhat stunning when Fall is at its peak. I had been hoping to actually see and experience this view this year. It had been a while since I took my last Autumn picture from this vantage point. A hike going through this location became a goal for the weekend’s activities.
I needed to get to the target location for the picture I wanted to take a little later in the morning, after the sun had cleared the trees. The point was to get the sun shining directly on the trees rather than have them in the shadows. Since the park was close to home, I had to make sure that I did not leave home too early.
This is a picture I got from the location of interest.
My overall timing for the picture had ended up not being ideal – too late for the colors and too early in the morning to avoid shadows. This was not the picture I had had in my imagination, but it would have to do.
There happened to be a few birds in the water in that corner of the lake.
I walked along the north shore of Clopper Lake. (As I mentioned before, I am usually on the other side of the lake.)
Fall could be experienced in its full brilliance along the lakeside.
But there were also other sections of the trail where all the leaves on the trees were still green. These sections tended to be a little away from the shoreline. While I was generally not motivated to take pictures of green foliage, this section of evergreens, away from the lake, did catch my eye.
I took a diversion from the lake to walk along a road leading towards the entrance of the park. I then took a trail leading down to Seneca Creek from the parking lot for the Park Office near the entrance.
I ended up on the Greenway Trail which runs all along the creek, beyond the boundaries of the park itself.
This is a picture of another section of the park closer to the Long Draught Branch, a creek at emerges from the dam for Clopper Lake. The trail is called the Long Draught trail.
As the pictures in this blog show, different kinds of trees dominate different sections of the park. There must be a logical reason for this.
This hike did not take too much time. I was generally zipping up and down slopes which in past years would have presented actual challenges. But I was also getting tired towards the end of the hike. I slowed down in the section south of the Great Seneca Highway closer to home.
Not having had to drive anywhere to get on the trail, and because of the relative ease of the trail, I was done with the hike rather early in the morning. I did manage to cover over over 8 miles.
Splattered Brains 