A Strange Light In The Sky

This is the White Rock Creek Trail that passes under Skillman Road at Park Lane on it's way to White Rock Lake a couple of miles below this point. That would be to your right as the end of the bridge goes.

Trail Mile Markers (GPS) are great. If you need help on the trail or you are lost, they will locate you for rescue. If you are stranded by high water, yep, the high water rescue crew can still find you! Just hold onto that marker!

My love of Walgreens goes back 66 years. My grandmother would take me to the lunch counter at our Walgreens and we would have a tuna fish sandwich and a coke. Now, Starbucks and Panera Bread and a host of others have taken the fun out of lunch counters and the swirling on the red top stools.

Even the duck was perplexed as to what to do. It tried walking down the side to a stump and all the while giving the indication that, "I don't want to swim in this mess" so he stayed on the top perch. Funny, actually, while watching him negotiate his mind.

Yesterday, following my post, Walgreen's called to tell me that there most terrible inventory system actually had worked and I could pick up my meds that they could not fill because of their inventory system a few days back.  When I opened the door, I was meet with this strange light that had suddenly appeared. It was---sunshine! It had been twelve solid days without seeing that old friend and our natural source of vitamin D. The total rainfall at Love Field reported yesterday, had grown by 0.93 inches bringing the total to 8.36 inches with the 17:53 hour (5:53p.m.) reporting cycle of 6 hours, There is now a 60% chance of rain on both Tuesday and Wednesday this coming week. AARGH!! Also, I did forget to mention that just outside of Dallas, we have already had our first tornado of the season. It was on the grown for less than 2 miles but did serious damage.

After leaving the drugstore, it was on to complete two new errands since the list has grown again. While out, I crisscross the White Rock Creek Trail  several times and the visible flooding was well pointed out with such out-of-place things like water! I pulled into a shopping center, parked and walked down the sidewalk to a bridge that crossed the creek. Dallas has plenty of bridges; some 5,000 at last count by TexDOT. There, I could see the where the tail was by the bridge on the trail and the mile markers.

It was rather hard to get the shots that I wanted. One, I didn't bring my canoe with me. Two, my glass is only a 150mm and trees blocked the view from the service road behind the shopping center. But, you will be able to get the view of what I mean from one ones that I did get. 

A Strange Sign is Finally Gonna Be Removed

This is both a follow-up and a new post all rolled into one. Since yesterday, I have been trying to decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing. Some of you may remember that in the Archive, there is a post about a strange park sign that was a one-of-a-kind made for the Valley View Trail that runs at the end of the White Rock Trail going north three-quarters of a mile to Hillcrest Park. It read: "Beware of Wild Animals".

In summary of that post, I had called the Director of Parks and Recreation  asking about the reasoning behind such a sign. He had explained that when 121 was being made into the Sam Rayburn Tollway, it had actually cut off a fairly large habitat for bobcats and some had gone north in search of better habitat and some had come south for the same reason. The problem being is that coming south put them right in the mix of Plano and North Dallas. Sure enough. About that same time, people in Plano started sending in pictures of bobcats in their yard. Some even had pictures of several bobcats in their yard.

The nature trail in reference here was a dirty path that ran on the west side of Hillcrest Avenue along side the woods that run by the golf course farther west going toward Preston Road. It was also along the path that the bobcats were using to  migrate further south into North Dallas. Because of that, the sign was put up by the Dallas Recreation and Parks Department; with good reasoning.

Yesterday, I got the word that the contractor will be removing that sign as they expand the White Rock Creek Trail Northern Extension project over that nature trail path. It is scheduled to be complete by July according  to one of the contractors that I spoke with. He also, when queried, stated that he had seen bobcats in the area but they should move on after the work is complete since they are rather solitude in their natural habitat. Runners and bikers will keep them on edge enough to cause their migration to continue, but a displaced bobcat in the city won't be happy until its in deeper woods. Hello, Trinity River Bottoms!

Here are some images of the area as of yesterday.

Capital Improvement Info Board

Let the trail continue north This is the new path that will be concrete and ties in at the 7 mile marker of the White Rock Creek Trail presently.

Looking under Hillcrest Avenue, the original trail is to the right of the orange barriers.