Polaris

(Saturday Stories on traveling - part 5)

Continuing on our journey, we drove along the White River. I saw several spots I thought would be nice places to camp, but we can’t camp everywhere. I almost got a nice 8 point buck along one stretch of back highway. Fortunately, for both of us that didn’t happen.

I didn’t know anything about Johnson’s Shut-ins State Park before going there. Being a man with a pastoral background and bent, I hear shut-in and I think of a little old widow lady who isn’t physically able to get out of the house and depends on family and friends and church folks to help her out so she doesn’t have to go to a nursing home. That’s the only shut-ins I knew about. So I was curious to find out what this was.

We got to the turn off and saw a large State Park building, a long wide entrance, and signage about where you could and couldn’t turn. We drove the whole length of it, all the way to the gift shop at the end of a large parking lot, and never saw a campground nor a sign for a campground. We were somewhat baffled.

After driving back to the entrance, I pulled over and got out a map and realized the campground was about two miles away in a different area altogether. We found it, pulled in and were once again stumped as to where our campsite was supposed to be. When M had called earlier in the day Rose, the lady who answered the phone at the camp office, told her that the camp hosts were in site 109 and we could check in with them, which would be great if we could find site 109.

After wandering a bit, we found a little store in the campground. I went in and asked the lady working there if she could help.

She asked me what campsite we had.

“It’s loop 1 and number 104.”

“Yeah, you passed it right when you came in. That is the Equestrian Loop.”

“I didn’t see where it said Loop 1.”

“It doesn’t. It says it is the Equestrian Loop. And that is also where you will find the camp host site.”

Well, that doesn’t make sense, but we went back and found it. Checked in with the camp host, and got things set up.

While Monica made dinner, I rode my bike over to find the Black River Trail which I had read would take us to the Shut-ins, whatever that was. I read that it was about a two mile bike ride and then another bit of a hike to get there.

We had a nice dinner of some stuff M put together and then we did a walk around the campground and then played a couple of games of backgammon. We used to play backgammon together all the time when we were young, but we got busy with life and hadn’t had time to do that for years. We had to relearn the rules, but it didn’t take long.

Getting ready for bed, I looked up and realized the stars were brightly shining. Here was my chance. I set up my tripod again, found Polaris, and went to taking a star trail photographs. It is about an hour of long exposure photography. It came out pretty cool. Somewhat grainy, but overall, for my first attempt I was happy with it.

It got really cold overnight. We needed another blanket or two, but we survived.