Friday, November 12, 2010 - Hazlet State Park, Carlyle IL

Virginia Creeper, Red Rock, East Chatham NY, August 23, 2010

Distractions

My plan was to hit the road early this morning and beat feet for the Mississippi. But it didn't work out that way. It seems I got distracted by the iPad display at the Frankfort KY Walmart I stayed at last night and decided to buy one before I left {insert grin here}.

Nope - the 16GB WiFi model I wanted was not in stock. Ah, well. A quick check of the Walmart website showed some in stock at a Louisville store on the way to St Louis.

So I stopped by. Nope. Won't be in until next week. It seems Walmart's website includes merchandise on it's way - not just what is on hand. Go figure. Ah, well.

But wait. Maybe there is an Apple store in Louisville. Yup.

Night camp

Site 141 - Hazlet State Park, Carlyle IL

One of the largest campgrounds in the Illinois state park system, Hazlet State Park is located on the largest manmade lake in Illinois. Eldon Hazlet State Recreation Area is a 3,000-acre site on the west shore of Carlyle Lake, a Kaskaskia River impoundment. The site is located 3 miles north of Carlyle and 2 miles east of Illinois Route 127 in Clinton County.
Verizon cell phone and Broadband service are available here with a strong signal.
Locate Hazlet State Park on my Night Camps map
Check the weather here

Wind on the Gangplank

There was almost no soil in that part of the range - just twelve miles' breadth of rough pink rock. "As you go from Chicago west, soil diminishes in thickness and fertility, and when you get to the gangplank and up here on top of the Laramie Range there is virtually none," Love said. "It's had ten million years to develop, and there's none. Why? Wind - that's why. The wind blows away everything smaller than gravel."

Standing in that wind was like standing in river rapids. It was a wind embellished with gusts, but, over all, it was primordially steady: a consistent southwest wind, which had been blowing that way not just through human history but in every age since the creation of the mountains - a record written clearly in wind - scored rock. Trees were widely scattered up there and, where they existed, appeared to be rooted in the rock itself. Their crowns looked like umbrellas that had been turned inside out and were streaming off the trunks downwind. "Wind erosion has tremendous significance in this part of the Rocky Mountain region," Love said, "Even down in Laramie, the trees are tilted. Old-timers used to say that a Wyoming wind gauge was an anvil on a length of chain. When the land was surveyed, the surveyors couldn't keep their tripods steady. They had to work by night or near sunrise. People went insane because of the wind." His mother, in her 1905 journal, said that Old Hanley, passing by the Twin Creek school, would disrupt lessons by making some excuse to step inside and light his pipe. She also described a man who was evidently losing to the wind his struggle to build a cabin:

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