A Return To Turtle Lake

Here I am again after a couple more weeks. I'd first like to thank you for all the comments in my last post. They're always good to read. After giving it some thought, I decided that I'm going to try to write at least a little bit in every post. I think the more I write, the easier it will become. Then when I'm able to post more often I'll begin to get back into things like comments.

I had to really push myself this time because the doctor actually increased the medicine that stops me from writing. We both agreed that the answer for me is just to try extra hard to get back to blogging. I'm sharing some older pictures here from last November because I had some good adventures that I wasn't able to write about yet.

The place you see in these pictures is called Turtle Lake. I shared this place with you once before. But this time is a very different adventure. You see, when I came here before, this was a very difficult hike. I actually had to hike down the side of a mountain sized hill and back up to get here.

That hike exhausted both my dog and me. So you can understand that we weren't in any huge hurry to get back here that way. The one thing that intrigued me was that there were a couple of other people here at the lake on that first trip, so I knew there had to be an easier way to get here.

After a bit of boredom at home, I decided to do a bit of driving around Stone Park to try to find the real entrance to Turtle Lake. I finally found the right road after some twisting and turning. It's a big park. It also wasn't the easiest thing finding the path up to the lake from the parking area. The path starts way in the back of an open area, and it's not apparent that it's even there at first.

But I finally found my way to the lake after all of that. I consider it quite an accomplishment considering most of my hikes in the past were in smaller suburban parks. Who knows?
One of these days I might be able to call myself a legitimate hiker!

Something I haven't shared up til now is that this is a place that Lewis and Clark visited on their journey west. There are many places like that around here. I plan on sharing many of those with you as time goes by. Check my link if you want to learn more about them.

I love Turtle Lake because it reminds me so much of my old stomping grounds, Carpenter Lake, back in Michigan. The only problem here is that this park is closed to car traffic during the winter, so I can only visit Turtle Lake during warmer weather. Otherwisae it's quite a hike that I'm not quite up to yet.

Hopefully my next post will come a bit sooner than this one did. Then I can begin doing this more and more often again. This was progress though. I think I'll be getting back to normal in no time. See you next time!

Finally, A New Post

Writing this blog post is a big positive step for me right now. The reason for my long absence was something that I've suspected for a long time. Many of you know that I've been taking medicine for my head because of the car accident I was in. It has been helping a lot, but there is a very strange side effect.

The side effect is that I'm having trouble writing anything. At least that's the main problem I'm noticing. It effects other things as well. I'm sure you noticed that my writing had begun to drop off quite a bit before I finally stopped. It just became too difficult. My doctor confirmed that it was most likely the medicine after I explained the situation.

I can't stop taking the medicine, because it helps too much, and there's no real alternative. So right now the only real answer is to try to learn to overcome the side effects of the medicine, and write as much as I can.

I figure I'll come back slowly without pushing myself too much. I'm not sure how often I'll be able to write posts yet, but I think they'll come more frequently as I get used to thinking differently about how to push myself to write. I think I'll write a few posts and then begin thinking about commenting on other blogs.

The strange thing is that I can read anything I want, but when it comes to writing even a little bit, I just can't make myself do it. It's frustrating to think that anything could control my mind like that. Even while writing this, I have to stop and take short breaks every few sentences.

But I'm going to stop talking about all of this for now and begin talking about my love of nature. That's what this blog is really intended for anyway. I'm not going to ramble on too much about it this time, but I have a few pictures from some of my more recent outings. I've had trouble going out and taking pictures too, but I get out as much as I can.

These were actually taken a little over a month ago, but I took them intending to share them, so I hope you like them. I'll bring some more recent pictures as I write more posts. I may even try a post here and there with just pictures. That may help me post a little more often. I hate not being able to do this blogging thing at all.

Hopefully my next post will be a bit better than this one.