Adventurenet.net

When leaving the last park Lake Arrowhead I didn’t have a plan for where to visit after attempting to find the underwater town (which I did not find) and so I pulled over for a moment to research where to visit next.

Heading South towards home the next park is Fort Richardson State Park.

I never much care for war sites, but I want to give the park a fair shake.

I wish that I had taken pictures of the entrance area where visitors check in with the rangers. This place has several bookshelves.

After checking in I went to visit ye olde buildings.

This first building had a volunteer who I’m pretty sure made a Bob Newhart joke. He also gave a brief description of some of the items and discussion points for this location.

Next I visited the dead animal building. This one was. Um. “Off-putting.”

(I still pet the bison)

An old bridge was moved from its location over a nearby creek to the fort area.

Not all of the buildings are still standing. Some are partially standing and others are nothing but cement slabs.

Four-foot thick walls in the explosive storage building.

Which also has a short domed ceiling and air vents that twist through the walls.

The old bakery.

The barracks.

I was hoping to visit the second floor of this building.

But they put up a sign. And a fire extinguisher.

Here’s the mess hall and the food schedule.

I debated checking out the natural areas at this point, but I could tell that I was getting exhausted and that I should work on heading home a bit early. I still wanted to visit more parks and in my head I figured I could sneak in two more. (I only got to one more, the next park held my attention for longer than expected).

I made my way towards Lake Mineral Wells.

This drive was an unusual one. There are a lot of abandoned buildings and structures in the area and at one point I pulled over to take care of a thing. Let me show you.

This is my walk towards the thing I passed on the road.

Board of rusty nails pointed up in the road?

This feels like a trap, right?

Like a homemade spike strip?

This place is weird.

Here’s another abandoned building near the hillbilly trap.

And then I noticed an abandoned picnic area.

But then I found the mother of all abandoned buildings. I believe this may have been part of a military base that was abandoned in the 1970s.

Opting out of a trespassing ticket I found my way to the state park which has a funny outhouse sign.

I wanted to hike a little bit and also see the rock climbers, but I became distracted for several hours when I came upon a ham radio guy.

He had two radios hooked up to two computers that were all powered by that battery there.

This guy Sam is amazing and taught me a ton about ham radios. I’ve been thinking about getting a ham radio license and this visit makes me feel much better about this possibility. I was worried it would be too expensive, but he showed me the simple starter radio and said that I could be up and running for probably around $100.

I watched him broadcast in both morse code and in a digital format using a computer connected to the radio.

I saw and learned about the two methods he used to put up antennas and I learned about the different types of games that ham radio folks play.

I knew about some previously, but the ones I witnessed on this day were new to me and absolutely fascinating.

Ham radio license has moved up on my list.

I need to clock in to work. Keanu says “Hi.” but I can’t grab a picture atm.

See you soon.

Oh yeah. Wrecked a journal page here as well.

Byeee!