Wahkeena and Shallenberger

Joan and I added a shorter hike after each of the two visits to Christmas Rocks documented here. It's time to talk about them.

April 26.

On leaving Christmas Rocks we drove to Shallenberger State Nature Preserve to seek its trillium hillside, specifically trillium grandiflorum, the large white.

Click on the image to enlarge.

What we first noticed on the trail, however, was a ligneous (wooden) arch.

Approaching the trillium slope.

One section of the field.

A closeup.

Face on.

Afterwards Joan and I continued around the loop, plucking garlic mustard. This invasive will choke everything else out, given a chance, and we spend hours every spring yanking out garlic mustard from the woods behind our house. It's addictive, like popcorn or peanuts -- just one more! Evidence abounded along the trail that we weren't the only ones plucking: mustards left to dry on logs, rocks, or notches in trees. We didn't try to get them all, but focused on what was within a few yards of the trail.

Other flowers than trillium bloom here, of course, including this bellwort.

Geranium with a side of spider!

Then it was time to go home.

 

May 13th.

On this day our second hike was around the Wahkeena Nature Preserve, bequeathed in 1957 to the Ohio History Connection. Wahkeena is managed locally by the Fairfield County Park District, and is just up the road from Rhododendron Cove.

Joan and I had been here once before, long ago; to me it was as if it was the first time. As we got out of the car Joan spotted a green heron in the Study Pond, fixed in place, waiting for a fish to swim by.

Here's a panoramic view of Lake Odonata and the park building.

After a chat with the gent at the park entrance we set off. The walks here are mostly gentle but include a few ups and downs.

A walled-off spring that contributes to the lake.

Going deeper into the woods.

A greek valerian has begun to open.

Further on, a shelter house. Group outing, anyone?

Steps are part of one uphill section.

This was a productive trail; here, a jack-in-the-pulpit.

Joan and I trod slowly on the next stretch, studying either side, for the host had said we might see a showy orchis there. He was right, although it was too far off the path for a close look. Fortunately, we both had binoculars and my camera has a zoom.

The angle could be better, but we saw it.

These trees are quite tall, stretching to reach the sunlight in advance of, or at least simultaneously with, their counterparts.

All trees come down, eventually.

Back at the Study Pond, the trail became a boardwalk which transformed into a floating path, individual deck sections linked together and held in place by posts. Each piece would sink a wee bit as I stepped on it, and rise after I left.

As we passed from the woods to the pond we heard and saw two Baltimore Orioles, spectacular birds doused in black and orange. Joan and I rarely see these, so we paused for a few minutes until they flew on.

And then it was time to go home, after another complementary hike following Christmas Rocks.

Rhododendron Cove and Shallenberger Preserve

Amid all the social distancing and a very damp spring -- precipitation is flirting with 8" above normal, year-to-date -- Joan and I took advantage of two sunny Mondays, 4/20 and 4/27, to get outdoors. We visited the Rhododendron Cove State Nature Preserve and Shallenberger SNP: both on 4/20 and just Shallenberger on 4/27.

These features were created from sandstone laid down hundreds of millions of years ago, when Ohio was beneath the ocean. After uplift and becoming dry land the sandstone began eroding, and finally collars of moraine debris were laid down at the base of high points during the last glaciation, which, this far south, didn't reach the tops of the "knobs."

Rhododendron Cove
Parking for Rhododendron Cove is across a side road from a natural gas compression station. After a short, flat walk the trail turns left and begins to climb.

The property was donated to ODNR, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Ferns were poking up out of the ground, most still coiled and curled.

As were spring wildflowers, including the early saxifrage -- that's its name, early saxifrage.

The large-flowered bellwort. It's so bashful it never raises its head.

Note the perfoliate leaves -- the stem pokes through them.

From the small to the large, consider the trees.

Climbing up to a switchback.

Heading through a slot in the sandstone.

The trail turns sharply right after the rocks above. For a short stretch it's quite steep.

The sandstone layers are often pocked with erosion features.

The cap blocks may be isolated from their neighbors.

The rhododendron weren't in bloom yet. They usually blossom between early and late June, depending on the weather.

Here they love sheltered, cool mini-canyons.

Erosion  can also produce a lace effect.

Tons of violets were on the trails, purple, yellow, even white.

We even saw jack-in-the-pulpit.

 

Shallenberger

A short distance back towards Columbus from Rhododendron is the Shallenberger State Nature Preserve, another gift to ODNR. These pictures were taken on both 4/20 and 4/27.

The trail at Shallenberger isn't as demanding as at Rhododendron, but there is up and down. Joan and I soon encountered a hillside covered in large trillium.

A closeup. Notice the yellow pollen stains on the lower petals. (Click on the image to enlarge.)

A fallen trunk with a burl near its base.

We had plucked the occasional garlic mustard, an invasive species, back at Rhododendron, but Shallenberger needed lots of help. Some visitors had already been at work, with mustard corpses in the trail or hanging from trees. We walked down the paths slowly, sometimes diverting for five or ten minutes to pull up an egregious patch.

The hillsides were greening up nicely.

A red-bellied woodpecker, photo taken after a hasty rendezvous to generate more red-bellies.

The trail consists of two loops, one around each of a pair of knobs, joined by a short segment. The top of the first knob is accessible, if you're OK with stairs.

The view from the top will close in soon, as the leaves bust out, but I took this photo through one gap in the foliage. It's clear why the early settlers called these features "knobs."

A major shelf fungus.

Soon it was time to speed up our garlic mustard plucking and then return to the car. We had encountered only a few people on the trail during these two days of sunshine in the time of social distancing. Given the weather forecast, Joan and I should have another chance next week.