Northwest Indiana Trail Happenings
By Lawrence Turnquist
Another National Trails day has come and gone. Maureen Fehrs worked at the National Lake Shore. She rides there much more often than we do and she felt there wasn’t that much to do there, as some of it was flooded and none of us are chain saw certified on the National Properties.
Elaine Anderson and Bob Thomas and I went to Deep River. Bob and I had not ridden the North of Old Lincoln Hwy part of the park in approximately two months. The last time we were there the river was up and some of the trails were under water and some were impassable but most were okay. This time the river was down and it made the work more manageable.
We used two ATV’s with a trailer behind one of them. It makes carrying every thing you need to accomplish the most, with least hours invested possible. There is no way you could carry a chain saw big enough to cut up some of those trees on a horse, to say nothing of gas, bar oil, wedges and an axe. Steel wedges are heavy but plastic ones are limited in what they can do.
Bob showed considerable skill in dealing with some of the trees. They don’t fall with ease of cutting them up in mind. On the bigger ones it doesn’t take a very long piece to be bigger than what we can roll out of the way. I have never experienced someone rolling an ATV and I am happy to report that’s still true, even after Saturday. The issue was in doubt on several occasions.
Walter Donald, the park manager, gave us his full cooperation and agreed to fix the approaches to a bridge that are seriously eroded. We have had two rains in the last year that we are sure were at least 50 year rains. The amount of earth and rock moved is unbelievable.
It was a good day and I am sure all three of us felt good about what we accomplished.
Some time ago I mentioned that there’s the possibility of riding on a new part of the park that has not been open to us in the past. Bob and I rode some of it a few weeks ago. It’s going to be well suited to horse trails. I realize most of you who have thousands and thousands of acres of state and federal land to ride on can not understand how we can get that excited about approximately 400 acres more than what we have now. It’s a different world up here.