The Poison Ivy Reserve

I didn't have time to go further afield today, and so I returned to Raccoon Creek State Park, which was teeming with mosquitoes the size of sparrows, clouds of them!  Repellent only made them mad, and so I spent four hours swatting and smacking at them.  In the summer, this place is all bugs and mud; in the winter, it's all snow and jaggers.  I unaffectionately refer to Raccoon Creek as "The Poison Ivy Reserve."  The only thing it has in greater abundance is bugs--gnats, biting flies, mosquitoes.  Today's was one of the worst hikes of my long woodland career.  The trails were wildly overgrown and blocked by fallen trees.  Does no one hike here anymore?  Although it's not a beautiful park, the woods can be pleasant and calming, and I did manage to find a tolerably bug-free ridge among the hemlocks, where I spent about an hour reading in my hammock.  The birdcalls and the shade were nice.  I even heard an illusive wood thrush, which generally only sings in the deep forest.  It makes such a lovely, flute-like song.  But aside from the lake itself, there's really nothing in the way of "views" to look at here.  There are no vistas or overlooks.  My goal on this hike, other than just to disengage my spirit, was to find an old flag plaza that I came across years ago--some forgotten old site once sacred to the Boy Scouts.  I couldn't remember where it was exactly, but I knew which quadrant of the forest to look in.  And here it is, sitting just off the Camp Trail above a mosquito-infested stream.  If you click on the photo and look closely, you'll see two stone mounds with a smaller mound in between.  Once I found it, I had to wonder...should I be setting loftier goals for myself?