Social Distancing

Covid-19.  What is it and what does it do?

I’m over it.  

Scientifically, yeah, it’s interesting.  To me, I find the social effects that this virus has created more interesting.

Bottom line, the current situation that we are in sucks. 

The virus/shuts downs have not effected employment much for my wife and me.  She has been working from home most of the time.  And I go into work as normal.  

No issues with traffic any more.  And going to the store is super interesting to me.  

I kinda like not having to deal with people anyway.  

Yesterday was the first day that I was really upset by the virus.  

My wife and I have been spending a lot of time with her parents on the weekends.  Her parents have been retired for about a year now. Both are very active in traveling to see family/friends across the US.  They have had to postpone their travels because of the Virus.   

So we have been taking her father out hiking and showing him some of Indiana’s hidden features.  

He’s a very active man and he is really enjoying the exercise on our hikes.  But I think he really enjoys spending time together more than anything.  

We have been telling him about Shades State Park for some time now.   It’s one of our favorite state parks and we usually visit the park a few times a year.  

Yesterday, we decided to make the drive to Shades State Park.  It was a beautiful sunny day, low 50s.  We were ready to go explore and hike.

When we got to the park entrance, signs all over the gate house said Covid-19 this Covid-19 that.  No camping due to Covid-19.  

Due to Covid-19, only Trail 6 and 9 are open for hiking.  

You have got to be kidding me. 

I knew that camping was shut down, but shutting down trail systems?  They left the two simplest and shortest trails open to the public.  

It didn’t make any rational logic to me.  Social distancing.  What does it even mean?  

I was very upset yesterday.   Sure, Social Distancing is important.  Close all the trails down but leave two of them open, forcing park visitors to only use those two open trails.  Funnel all the visitors into the one area of the park.   

We did hike the 2 short trails that were open at Shades Park.  

We left Shades and made the 10-mile drive west, to Turkey Run State park.  Hoping that at least one of the open trails at Turkey Run would be a longer, harder trail.  But no. Only the simplest and shortest trails were open.   And there were a lot of people at Turkey Run.  So we left.  

We then made a 40-minute drive northwest to go hike at the Portland Arch Nature Preserve.  

And this time, no trail closures.  

The Portland Arch is Indiana’s only naturally formed stone arch.  

The park has two trail systems.  We hiked both.  

Between the 3 parks that we visited yesterday, we hiked about 6.5 miles.  Not a bad day.  

The pictures below are from yesterday’s adventures.   

Sugar Creek

Virgin BlueBell 

Built in cable

under the arch

Big Rock