Escaping the House to Lake Creek Nature Preserve

On Saturday Forest and I escaped the house for a short hike. We had actually first escaped mid-afternoon on Thursday for a wonderful, warm and sunny hike to another nature preserve after a very frustrating online school morning. But otherwise we’d mostly been clinging to the house from online school to work, and if the weather was nice we would go out and wander the yard a bit. Chris had gone to Mississippi the Sunday before and I was single parenting it for the next week+. And by the end of the week my mental reserves were gone and getting outside was needed. We hadn’t been to Lake Creek Preserve since early 2019. I just went to look for a corresponding blog post but apparently I didn’t write one? I have a Flickr set here that includes those photos from that first trip, though.

It was close and wild enough to get some time outside.

Forest thought this mossy tree was a cozy place to pretend to sleep.

One thing this park boasts is a lovely older community of dwarf palmetto, Sabal minor. Most dwarf palmetto I see growing are not all that large but these had some taller trunks that were reminiscent of saw palmetto, Serenoa repens.

Lovely autumn colors in the floodplain forest.

I was happy to see more concrete blocks and the like in some of the muddier sections as they weren’t there the last time we visited and the trails can be pretty messy during wet conditions. I was actually nervous they would be this way on our visit because we’d just had some rain but they weren’t bad at all.

A lot of lovely, quiet scenes. It isn’t far from a major road so you do hear traffic and there is a subdivision to the north but it is a nice reprieve into nature.

We made it down to Lake Creek with only seeing a small handful of people, two women, two dogs, and a baby on their way out near the beginning, and one other woman who went down a side trail just as we were approaching a trail junction. Despite the location and easy access, it wasn’t crowded. I think the overcast skies and slightly chilly weather was a deterrent.

Overall, Forest had a good time and it was short enough (1.5 miles) there was no (well, not much) complaining. And it quenched my need to get out of the house and see something beyond our walls and relieve a bit of the stress of parenting, online schooling, and working! I do think we should hit this park up a little more often than once every nearly two years, though! It is easy to access and diverse enough in habitat that you could encounter some interesting things in a variety of seasons.