There was only one thing planed for the day, a ten mile out and back trail they call Castle Trail. The weather guesser on NPR had some ominous thoughts, eventually confirmed by the park staff. The chance of rain went up to 40% around 1P. Conditions to the west were ripe for something quite nasty.
Yeah, I probably could have made it. But, there’s nothing like being miles from the car when the heavens open up. It's even worse when there's lighting and hail. Been there. Instead, I chose a four mile loop through the same section of the park. The outbound leg was the Medicine Root Trail.
Back at the visitors center, the forecast hadn’t changed. So, I refilled my water bottles and stuck with a few short trails. The first they call The Window Trail...
From The Door Trail...
Even after lunch, it was still too early to call it a day. So, it was off to find Conata, another ghost town killed off by the closing of the railroad. There really isn’t much left, just a grove of trees, a few foundations and this old car.
This took me into a section of the park I hadn’t explored yet, and the only buffalo sighting of the day.
After ditching the car at a camp ground, I went off to try and get a better shot, with mixed results.
By this point, I did notice the darkening of the sky and decided to at least get passed the dirt and gravel park roads and onto pavement. These are from an overlook…
Leaving the overlook and heading back north, I flicked on the radio. The Allman Brothers were interrupted by a National Weather Service Bulletin. A “Severe thunderstorm warning had been "issued for Custer", forty miles west. The warning included possible tornadoes and “ping pong ball sized hail.” While the sky did darken, the storm passed to the southwest with little more than a splattering of rain.
Custer, on the other hand took the brunt of it with quite a lot of hail damage. But, since the sky in Wall did in fact start to clear, I took a walk back to Wall Food and settled in again. Somehow I didn't think I'd get a repeat of the previous night's show.
No comments:
Post a Comment