Dirt Road Scavenger Hunt

Last week my church published its monthly e-newsletter.  It included a scavenger hunt that families can do at home because we can't do the usual church Easter egg hunt.

Being an overgrown kid, I took the scavenger hunt challenge.  However, I put my own twist on it.  I did it as a a dirt road ride and took a photo of each item on the list.  I taped the list to my handlebars for easy reference.

It was so much fun!  As I focused on the landscape, looking for various items, it really helped me simply be in the moment.  I looked at the clock on my bike computer about an hour and a half into my ride and was surprised to realize I had been out there that long!  

Here are my photos in the same order as on the list (not the order that I took them):

Two different types of leaves (sweetgum and muscadine)

Something prickly (thistle)

There were plenty of flowers!  This was a pretty one.  Later, I used my iNaturalist app to identify it.  It's a wild geranium.

I looked forward to Jackson Road because it's particularly fun for dirt road riding.  I don't get to ride on it very often because it's too far away for my relatively short weeknight dirt rides.  Additionally, I predicted that there would be a good photo opp of the cows that graze behind a fence right next to the road.  Sure enough, a herd was gathered idyllically exactly where I expected.  However, their people were nearby.  They probably would have been concerned if they saw me taking a picture of their cows, and I felt too weird to ask permission.  So, I kept an eye out for more cows during the remainder of my ride.  I didn't see any more until I pulled into my own driveway.  This was actually the last photo I took on my scavenger hunt:

Something smoooooth

What's brown and sticky?  A stick.

Three clovers

Something rough (pine bark)

Mulch is really a landscaping thing (for preventing erosion, inhibiting the growth of weeds, etc.) and not something you find explicitly in the wild.  Therefore, I figured that my best bet for finding a piece of mulch was in front of one of the houses in Hillsboro.  Actually, I found a bunch of pieces of mulch:

Pine needles

A type of weed (poison ivy!)

A rock

Something yellow (buttercups)

Something man-made (dam at Hungerford Lake)

Caterpillars abound right now, and so I decided to find one for something fuzzy.  I didn't have to look too long.  This one plopped on the ground in front of me less than 1/4 mile into my ride.  I moved it to a safer place in the grass beside the road.

Because it's spring, it's easy to find something green!  Here's my father-in-law's hay field in front of his house, about ready for cutting.  Right now you can just see the roof line (right of center) above the grass.  After he cuts the hay, you'll be able to see the entire house.

Something soft (moss)

Ideally, I would have uploaded my route to my bike computer ahead of time.  However, our home wi-fi went out over the weekend, making our home PC unusable for Internet service.  (AT&T is supposed to deliver a new router today.)  Therefore, I couldn't create and upload a route like I usually do.  Fortunately, I'm pretty familiar with all the dirt roads I planned to ride.  I still had cellular data available on my phone, and so I studied a map before I headed out.  There was one little section that I tried to memorize: after the lake with the dam, take the first right, then the first left.  However, I then came to a fork that I didn't remember studying ahead of time.  Which way should I go?  I guessed.  I guessed wrong.  Although I wasn't truly lost, when I came to an intersection I recognized, I was farther from home than I should have been.  I modified my route, taking paved roads the rest of the way home.  Like a kid, I had to hurry home for dinner.  But mainly because I'm the cook!