Grey Areas

Early morning at Mirror Lake. The ducks were already awake, though.

Visit #969, Saturday 29 August 15, 6:10-8:20AM, 4.8 miles.
Temps in the high 60's, mostly sunny.

As I reported last week, I found some new graffiti which needed eradicating. That was this week's focus.

I hiked a clockwise route from the parking lot. Not expecting to cover a lot of ground today, I decided to take the time to clean the dirt parking area in the northwest corner of Mirror Lake. That parking area alone filled a trash bag which became impractical to carry, so I tied it up and collected it at the end of Saturday's work, and dropped it in a trash barrel along with my other bag of trash.

Again, since I didn't expect to travel far today I walked the trail all the way to the end at West Main Street across from Belmont Avenue. Good thing I did, for I found someone had dumped a large trash can filled with roofing shingles, along with garbage bags filled with roofing shingles, and some loose roofing shingles.

I collected everything and placed it at the entrance of the parking area, effectively rendering the area useless for parking for the remainder of the weekend-or so I thought. I wanted the trash to be visible to the parks crew that would pick it up on Monday.

I then proceeded to the graffiti, painting over it where I could.

I can't for the life of me remember if I painted over this becaus I also had ideas of chipping off the bark instead. This tree was struck by lightning many years ago and still bears the scars. Funny thing too; I rode my mountain bike by the same tree on Sunday morning and failed to see whether I painted it over or not. Damn senior moments!

I DO however remember painting over the other graffiti I found.

 

Here I was smart enough to leave the white trail marker alone.

 

Done with the graffiti, I continued on toward Merimere Reservoir, picking up trash. Enroute I met a woman walking a dog who saw the garbage can I placed and, rather then drive the short distance to the park and start her hike there, chose to park half in front of the garbage can and half in the street!

I reasoned it can't be long before someone moves the garbage can. I had to know, so on Sunday morning I took a bike ride up West Main Street and Belmont Avenue to satisfy my curiosity. Yep.

I don't make this stuff up.

Anyway, on Saturday I completed my loop and dropped off my second bag of trash.