Spring at Cedars of
(Click to enlarge pictures)
What
a great place, Cedars of Lebanon State Park. Hiking trails, caves, hiking
trails, karst, hiking trails, cedar glades, hiking
trails…it has it all. Oh, and there's opportunities for picnicking, disc golf,
swimming, cabins, pretty much the whole pseudo-outdoorsy bit. There’s several different trails, a couple of which join one
another, and this is best place to start, at the trailhead for the Limestone
Sinks trail (not Limestones Sink, as the sign at left calls it.)
The long trial, Hidden Springs, connects just a few hundred feet down the
Limestone Sinks trail, and depending on who you
believe, it’s around 5 miles long.
If you like sinkholes, you’re
in luck…they’re everywhere out here. Big…small…and everywhere in between. Quite
a few of them lead into caves. Unless you know what you’re doing and you have
specific permission to be in them, it’s best to just stay out. Do notice,
however, the loads and loads of wildflowers, especially in the third picture.
They’re just a hint of what’s to come.
With
a name like Cedars of Lebanon, one would expect that there are a lot of trees
here, and indeed there are. Big ones too. Mind you, there’s lots of stuff
growing out here, like the little three-leafed beast clinging to the trunks at
right…lots of oil on those leaves too…yikes!
One
of the more interesting sights at Cedars are its cedar
glades, which are rather like their own little subculture of mostly barren
areas. Sometimes they’re rich with wildflowers, sometimes they’re rock-floored,
and sometimes they’re a mix, as in the picture above, which is a composite of
two shots stitched together. I think it turned out pretty well.
It’s
around the glades that you tend to find the Yucca, a succulent generally more
associated with deserts than with the
Another very out-of-place looking
succulent found at Cedars: Prickly Pear! I hear they’re good pickled…
There’s loads of life, of course. Here’s a
dung beetle (I think that’s what it is) and a wooly booger (funny how we given
them such amusing names) I encountered on the trail…the one at right is, Shell
says, a “bagworm”, one of those nasty things that kills trees…had I known, I
probably would’ve squished it. Or maybe not, my karma doesn’t
need to be leveled any further.
And then there’s these
guys. They were quite busy, as you would expect, given the vast fields
of flowers to be found at Cedars. This one seemed to be posing for me, so I
obliged her with a picture. The insects as a whole were of a very good humor,
except for a few ill-tempered red wasps who ran me
away from a particularly spectacular glade. Even the ticks seemed to lay off,
though I did manage to pick up one. Of course. Some guys are chick magnets; I
am a tick magnet. One trip to
…but allow us, please, to leave
such unpleasant things behind. What was I going to discuss next? Oh, the
flowers. Yes. They are everywhere,
and they are thick. It’s true, we had
a very good winter, lots of moisture after several
years of drought…maybe Gaea is celebrating the end of a long dry spell. Yellow,
White, and…Purple Nurple! It is quite staggering, the
vast fields of flowers. Even in rocky glades (as in the second shot here) the
buds are everywhere.
I don’t tend to play faves
with pictures, but nurple and rock, well, they just go together, don’t they?
Forget
I was torn, really. Which
pictures to post? Then I decided, why compromise, put ‘em all up. They’re gorgeous!
But because you can only look at flowers
for so long (yeah surrre) here’s a nifty-looking thistle ,
and a couple of trillums; toadshades,
I think, just on the verge of blooming.
And some more glades. The one at left had
a raptor of some sort coasting over it just before I got the camera out, darn
it. The one in the middle…some much exposed rock, it looks paved. And the one
at right has a nice bench from which to view the flowers…but it also has an
easily-irritated population of red wasps. I didn’t dawdle long as I might’ve,
needless to say!
So much for
a break, back to the flowers. Here’s some fire pink. Yow, but this stuff was vivid. It screamed at me, “Shoot me, big
boy! Shoot me first!”
But I would
be remiss if I failed to note that the trees were many and varied and had loads
of character too. Here is an interestingly-textured bit of trunk…it’s located
at the bottom right of the wide shot at right.
Left: This little pond is as much water as
you’ll see on the surface at Cedars of Lebanon. Right: Verdancy,
defined.
There is little to no water on the surface
here because this is karst,
which is a fancy, Yugoslav-based word for “cave country”. You’ll see lots of
rock at the surface, even where there are no sinkholes, as as
left…but what’s this? A wire fence along the trail? What could it be guarding?
Looks like a whole lot of nothing…
You actually get a hint of what’s to come
a little further up the trail, where you find this narrow but very deep-looking
pit piercing the earth. Don’t drop your keys…
Now, on the other side of that
aforementioned fence is a dry stream bed. Upstream, well, we’ll get to that.
Downstream…yep, that’s a cave entrance, and quite a large one at that! This is
the Hidden Spring from which the trail gets its name.
You can’t go into it very far—not from
here, anyway it’s choked with the inwash that heavy
rains bring—but it is a nice place to sit and cool off on a hot day. You
definitely wouldn’t want to be here during a thunderstorm, though I’m sure it
would be quite spectacular!
Left: the view from inside out. Center:
Looking at the cave, from above. Pretty, but not recommended. Why? Because the
ledge is paper-thin, as you can see from below.
You leave the cave, climb back up the wash, and onto the dry stream bed. A
few hundred feet upstream you notice a large crack in the bed of the
stream…another entrance to the cave. This one would require rope, but the
sounds of water from below sure are inviting in this oh-so-dry area. Mind your
step, there’s nothing to keep you from falling, and it’s a pretty good drop…
Another tease if you’re thirsty comes just
a little farther upstream, where you see thus fence surrounding…what? A well?
Yep, and it almost certainly drops into the same cave. Just another interesting
thing to see on an already fascinating trail.
Had enough of the geological schtick? Back to the flowers then! We’ve seen lots of white
and plenty of nurple, so how’s about some yaller?
As with all the rest of the
flora, I have no idea what they are, but they were amazingly beautiful, and
grew in the unlikeliest of places. (note: I know I included
an awful lot on this page, but when the viewing is this good, you’ve got to
take lots of pictures, so why not
share them all?)
More greenery. From left to
right: a ball of moss that merited a second look; some of the ground cedar that
was everywhere; two shots of the branch that whacked me in the mush and
demanded I take a picture of it, too.
Turned out it really was photogenic!
The trees demand some attention, so…from
left to right: some stately shagbark hickory; reindeer moss at the base of a
gnarly tree; a lofty mammoth reaches for the sky; and the inevitable Bark Shot,
with Extra Added Fungus as a bonus. You know we’re getting close to the end
when we throw in the Bark Shot.
Left to right: a tree losing its fight
with insects or worms, but still standing…a tree that has shed its bark
shamelessly…and two nifty looking stumps.
Left to right: a single while
flower. That’s all it is, and all it needs to be! Then, three shots of what I
am told are “shooting stars”.
The sinks and caves make a
comeback…I’d describe each one, but they are everywhere, and they are varied.
Just when you think you’ve seen it all…is
that me and…Madonna?
But really, this is just one amazingly
large gall on an otherwise healthy tree. It’s quite a sight!
Left: fortunate homeowners with their own
private access to the trail. Right: a yawning crevice right next to the trail
beckons…what waits below? Adventure!
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