Atlantic Ridge Preserve - The First Visit

It's time to introduce Atlantic Ridge Preserve State Park!

We completed all the activities on the list at Jonathan Dickinson State Park, so we get to start exploring a new state park now. This one may actually be considered part of the other, because in order to enter the park you need the gate code, which you get by calling Jonathan Dickinson.

The goal for this first visit was to make it to the southern boundary, following the map route through intersections 3, 7, 6, 18, 19, 21, 22 and 24.

One mile from the parking lot, via Park Drive, there's a big grassy opening marked Event Area. I can imagine some sort of equestrian activities happening here.

After another mile, we reached Post #18 and the Seawind Canal.

In the next mile, we started running into wet spots in the road/trail - some bigger and deeper than others.

And then the cloudy day turned into a rainy day! Fortunately, it was a nice warm rain, and didn't last the entire time.

We even found some wild flowers/grasses/berries that we hadn't seen before. (I still need to get around to trying to identify them.)

At intersection #21, we turned south. Post #22 is about 4 miles from the parking lot, after which we skirted the edge of a lake to get to Post #24.

From there the trail was quite difficult to follow, but thanks to my intrepid leader, we managed to find the boundary fence anyway. 

After retracing our steps back to intersection 24, we decided we had enough energy to take a different route back, trying the loop through intersection 23. 

This route was even wetter; in a couple of spots we were wading in water above our knees. Maybe we should have saved this hike for the dry season!

As the afternoon wore on, the clouds started lifting and the sun came out. In addition to several varieties of butterflies, we came across some vultures perched in trees, and even a deer in the distance. It was a gorgeous day!

Look closely!

After retracing our steps for the last four miles, we made it back to the parking area, grateful to have accomplished our goal, and looking forward to our future return to this park.