Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Trail Conditions -more to think about...

I'm away from St. Johns this week but did some evaluation of the trails in the preserve before I took this much needed break;




I was able to use the Earth Google photos to pin down sections of the trail as green, yellow, orange and red according to the present conditions; most of the trail system is in good to great shape and can be considered open and accessible (GREEN = 50%); light overgrowth that can be cleared with one quick pass of the brush hog is rated YELLOW (maybe another 30%); one particular long stretch is ORANGE and is overgrown in such a way that the porcelain berry intertwined with wild rose makes it difficult to pass (orange = >10%) and a couple of spots have small, downed trees or heavy vines that need to be removed before we can consider it fully open (RED = 10%)


At this point we need to address the most difficult sections before we can begin serious field work and orientations in September; September 22 looks like our first full fledged ORIENTATION DAY so there should be more than enough time between now and then to make the trails completely passable.






Picture below is the first of the six consecutive trail segments. Trail conditions for this segment are rated as in great shape and are all rated GREEN.






Thursday, August 12, 2010

PLAYING WITH VIDEOS

Back in June I wrote a post about the nature of the tidal estuary Alley Creek; Alley Creek is very photogenic and it is almost impossible to take a bad picture of this wonderful water body; it is always changing and always presents a fresh (or maybe that should be 'brackish'?) face to the visitor; so it was easy for me to add a variety of pictures from my files.

At the time I thought that maybe I'd try some day to take a video and post that along with the stills; I never did that before but the Alley has so many stories and the preserve is so rich and varied that a video record might just capture what my words or pictures cannot.

So here it is the first video post. If this works out I'd love to do some more. Could be fun!