Cougar Mountain

After the first half mile, I was having serious regrets about suggesting a hike this Saturday. The morning had been sunny and clear while we stayed at home dutifully working, but the afternoon skies were turning grey. I was also missing a lot of the scenery because I was concentrating on stepping around the larger rocks and various puddles on the path. The "caves" were supposed to be about a mile into the park, so I kept going (except for those occasional breaks every .2 miles when we came to yet another trail crossing and I had to pull out the map to be sure we were still going the right way).

Then we reached another trail marker. I pulled out the map again. "We're getting close - the cave is supposed to be on the left side." We passed a fenced off area, some enormous trees, a few other Saturday afternoon hikers, and then we came to the next trail marker. "We passed it."

Upon further examination, we decided that this was the cave:



So we continued on, through the rain. There were a few places where we absolutely had to leave the path just to make it past the mud and water. I got a very dubious look when I decided to photograph this "mud puddle".



It will look very different when all those sticks are covered in green leafiness again. We also paused a few times to take pictures of ourselves on the trail.



We returned along the Wildside trail, making a loop back to the trail head. In fact, there are so many trails you could make many unintentional loops quite easily. About 200 yards from the trail head we found a display about the coal mining in the area. There we discovered that our "cave" could really be called a "cave in" because it is where the ground has collapsed into the mine workings below, causing a pit in the ground. The pits are not very obvious, especially since they are covered with many years of vegetation and because there are tons of ups and downs along the sides of the trail. There was a large path leading downward by the mining display - the broad green ramp led to a concrete wall blocking off any access to the old coal mine. There was also a nifty little mining cart display.



I can't think of a nifty conclusion to this post, so