Canoe Creek State Park

The eastern wahoo. Wow!

I have been wanting to visit Canoe Creek State Park for ages, and finally had an excuse this weekend. I was tipped off that the mysterious "eastern wahoo" was in fruit there, a plant whose existence I was previously sadly unaware. Something about the striking colors of this bold beauty compelled me to go see it for myself!

Luckily, it's doing its thing right on the trail leading to the cool industrial ruins of limestone kilns, which are open for exploration at the end of a surprisingly short trail. My son Jasper is still thrilled by the novelty of snow, in spite of my conviction that the novelty is bound to wear off soon. And the snow was blanketing the ground in earnest. And it was a gorgeous day.

Canoe Creek is also home to a lovely and inviting lake, and a "bat church". A church next to the park was abandoned, and at some point a colony of little brown bats moved in. The land was purchased and the church altered to make it even more ideal as a bat sanctuary. In the summer when the mother bats were using it as a nursery for their baby bats, the population would swell to 17,000, and it became a treat to come there on a June evening to watch the bats emerge to hunt for insects. Then white nose syndrome, the deadly fungus that has been wiping out all our native bats, arrived at Canoe Creek. In recent years, park rangers have continued the tradition of guiding visitors to see the bats emerge while performing an official bat count, but the numbers apparently are closer to 100. I hope we can go there to cheer them on as they hopefully continue to slowly rebound.

Limestone kilns.

One of the limestone kilns.

Inside a kiln.

A kiln entrance.

A view of the lake.