This summer has to be by far one of the coolest I’ve ever seen. Nevertheless I’ve managed to have a few outings in the last couple weeks. Most notably is 4 separate visits to the Sticky Hole of Solitude.
I love how this hole never really dries out even weeks after use. On the last trip I brought nearly 40 litres of water from home just to be safe. After squishing around for nearly 2 hours I only needed about half of it. I’m getting more confident no one’s noticed my presence yet… I’ve been lucky enough to have rain within 24 hours of each visit while not actually getting rained on while I was there. It does a great job of washing away any traces of my footprints, especially after the last visit where I had to make 4 trips back and forth to the car with jugs of water 🙂
The grass/weeds is/are have grown so high now that the pit and the trails I’ve made to various hiding places is completely concealed from the road and I’ve seen no evidence that anyone else has been there. I’ve got sort of a schedule I follow now… Arrive at midnight, and get all my stuff ready. Start poking around the pit to see what shape it’s in and start to dig it up a bit with a pitchfork… I’m very aware of my surroundings at that point because I’ve seen the occasional truck drive in… By 2am I stick my feet in and by 3am I’ve got it all mixed up and ready to rock… By 4 it’s starting to get bright enough to see without lights which makes cleanup time much easier. By 5am I’m on my way home…
I’ve also returned to another place I found 2 years ago… Back then I was much more timid and never took the time to actually explore or enjoy the place. Last summer it was completely flooded all year. This year it hasn’t flooded so far… The more the water level drops, the more earthy stuff is exposed. There are some creeks that drain into it and they are starting to dry up too. In their place is some very deep kinda peaty stuff. It’s not as sticky as the Great Hole but it’s really soft and there’s almost not enough texture to it… Nevertheless… The creeks carry fine particulates from somewhere I haven’t explored yet, and it mixes with the peaty stuff. The result is very deep, very soft, without the awful stink of some other similar spots I’ve found. Even though the road it’s beside has a bit more traffic, I can use that spot earlier in the evening when there’s still some light since the tall plants bordering it make it difficult to see when you’re driving by.
There’s also a few places a bit further in the bush where some patches of grass have grown but under it is still soft. These places are the perfect day spot because you can’t see the road at all. I plan to spend an afternoon there when the sun is out and it’s a bit warmer. If I can find a spot where the creek is still trickling I should be able to mix the saturated stuff under it when the less saturated stuff and make a large deep gooey mess. I stuck my foot in one area and sank almost to my waist, although it was too saturated to enjoy. Yeah it’s gonna be sweet!
And… One more area I want to explore this year. I’ve checked it out briefly before but the creek was still too deep. What’s so exciting about this place? It’s clay and silt. Only clay and silt. So much so that the only thing that grows there has a hard time prospering and there are lots of places where nothing has grown at all. I visited there earlier this year and stepped in the wrong place and sank my foot into grey clay and silt. Checking the map again I see these creeks are carrying silty clayey water from a nearby lake. In mass quantities. I’m betting this has been happening long enough that if I stomped around a bit I would end up with a nearly bottomless pit of fun. The only problem is this clayey silty creek forks off all over the place. It’ll take a while to find ‘the’ spot… There’s also more houses and farms around than I’d like, but most of the fields that have been planted have already grown several feet high… There is the possibly of finding another day spot, which I’d kinda prefer, especially in an area with some traffic, as a lone vehicle parked along the side of the road isn’t nearly as suspicious.
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