I left Davenport bright and early in order to book it down to see Leandra before the 4th of July.
Though it was ambitious I was trying to get three or four 80-100 mile days in order to get there in time.
The first day, I ended up staying at Lake Darling. Although, I saw on the website that it was a closed park, I thought it would be a good place to set up a tent or find a pavilion.
When I reached the park, excited that I had bike over 90 miles that day, it was already dark and I wasn't sure what to expect.
When I pulled into the park it was dark an eerie. I biked into the park to get off the main road to see what kind of campground would be there...
However, the road leading into the park didn't seem to end. Thousands of lightening bugs lit up the air, and I could see dear and critters scurry across the road. Some of the place was weedewacked, but most was overgrown, and the you could hear creatures in the woods---which yes, scared me at times...the further I went back, the more scared I got. Hoping I would find the lake and a nice place to wake up, I only realized from the reflection from the moonlight on the pools of remaining water...that the lake was no longer a lake but a marsh...and from what I could see, the park hadn't been used in ages.
So, needless to say, I was spooked...and in the middle of nowhere. I made a decision to camp in the front near the entrace. At that point I really didn't care if a ranger stopped in fact, at the time, I would probably prefer it---most rangers don't mind cyclists anyway.
So I parked my sleeping bag next to a tree....and throughout the night a series of run ins with racoons, moles, and other creatures i could not identify kept me up most of the night and I realized that racoons scare me more than I thought, especially when I'm on my own...not sure if I will camp at abandoned parks again...
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