Inks Lake State Park

We planned to stay at Inks Lake State Park for several days. We had read that even though there are almost 200 campsites here on the lake, you must reserve months in advance to get one of those spots on most weekends. This must be a great place to camp! After our late night set-up, we woke to rain the first morning. So we spent most of the day exploring the national fish hatchery and driving to the nearby hill town of Kingston for groceries.

It continued to rain until 3:00 in the afternoon. With a break in the precipitation, we left quickly for a hike that the ranger had suggested for us. We were planning to head up past the Amphitheater Trail to the Connector Trail to the Lake Trail, then over to the Woodland Trail. With all those trail changes, we only made one wrong turn and found ourselves on the Fisherman's Trail. That added an extra mile to our hike, but we also got some great looks at Inks Lake in the clouds.

We knew we only had around two hours of daylight when we started, so this hike was more like a jog. Our planned hike was supposed to be around 5 miles, and we stretched it to over 6 miles with our detour. So we were moving pretty fast.

Our jog looked a little like a swim at times. With almost 24 hours of rain, the trail looked more like a creek.

And the creek looked more like a river. The usual crossing stones were under water, so it took some good balance and grace to get across the water. Since we possess neither of those, it was a soggy crossing.

To add to the water on the trail, it started raining again while we were at the furthest point away from our car. We should have known better than to trust that darn weatherman who forecast that the rain would be over by 2:00! The rain also made the solid rock slabs extra slick.

We could have played on the piles of rocks for a long time. But between the rain and the impending darkness, we didn't have time for fun today.

From this tallest point on the trail, we could finally get a glimpse of the Falkenstein Castle. It was eerily visible in the distance through the misty rain. The ranger told us that the owners modeled the castle after one they visited in Germany. The cost to build it was financed by the family cat litter fortune. It seems that the owners became wealthy from trademarking the process of cleaning up oil spills with cat litter.

As we slopped through the sections that were under water, and slipped over the slick rocks, we were still enjoying ourselves. We love the opportunity to hike in new places on a daily basis, even when the conditions aren't ideal. 

The reason we hiked this afternoon instead of waiting for better weather, was that the trails will be closed tomorrow. In fact, the rangers had already put up the signs to close the trail, even though it didn't go into effect until midnight. Inks Lake state park has a lottery system to draw names for a limited number of hunters to enter the park on specific dates. It just so happened that we showed up right before one of those hunting days.

As a testament to the amount of water on the trail, notice that the front of Mark's blue jeans are completely wet in the picture above. He led the way through most of hike, knocking the water off the tall grass along parts of the trail. 

Today we saw several deer, that will need to tread carefully tomorrow during the public hunt.

We arrived back to our car a few minutes after sun down, glad that we didn't have to ford the watery trails after dark! We were also glad to get seven miles of good aerobic exercise as we explored a little more of Inks Lake state park. With the public hunts starting tomorrow, and forecast low temperatures in the 20's, we'll be heading down the road further south tomorrow.