Journaling nature with Gunnar
Journal #1
Flowers, Friendly Squirrels, and Family Fun
During this weekend I had my very first Alpine club camping trip. I left campus around 11 a.m. on Friday and didn’t get back until 1 on Saturday. During this time, I was able to finalize my spot that I wanted to journal with the help of some DUAC officer’s recommendations. I ended up on Washington park because it is only a 7-minute drive from campus and it has a lot of big fields to play sports, two lakes to go fishing, and some pretty delicious restaurants nearby. Me and my roommate checked out this place called Pho Haus nearby and filled our stomachs with their specialty. Tummies full and moods satisfied we started to wander around the infamous Wash park.
We started out on the Smith Lake side where I immediately noticed a lot of peaceful readers basking in the sun, as well as playful puppies, and crazy E-bike kids popping wheelies on the path. Shortly afterwards I kept walking through the park where I came across a very pretty and well-maintained flower garden that had all sorts of colors. The coolest thing about this wasn’t just the flowers but also the wedding ceremony that was taking place right in the middle of the garden. There was a lot of loud personalities during the ceremony with best man’s hooting and hollering and bridesmaids hysterically crying ruining their excessive make up in the process. It was a cool sight to see but I didn’t stay long because I wanted to check out which lake of the two had better fishing spots.u00a0
As I continued my walk towards the second lake, I encountered various streams running parallel to the lake and I was surprisingly shocked to see how clear the running water was. Being someone who is from California and seeing some vile sewage streams right next to lakes this made me quite impressed on how clean Colorado is even in the urban areas. As I kept trekking towards the lake I kept on seeing more and more peculiar things. For example, I saw multiple squirrels who were very brave and not scared of humans whatsoever. At one point when I was just sitting on a random bench I got snuck up on by two squirrels begging for food. Sadly, I didn’t have any, so I shooed them away, but it didn’t take long for me to see another squirrel going right up to this boy and taking some of his snacks right out of his hands.u00a0
Once I finally got to the Grassmere lake loop I started to walk around to scope out the spots and see what kind of action was taking place. I noticed that the dock on the north side of the lake seemed to be the little honey hole because I saw at least 5 fish caught from this one fisherman within a short amount of time. Out of curiosity I went up to him and asked what him what kind of bait/setup he was using. He told me to get either a chatterbait or green pumpkin colored senko with a weighted hook if I wanted to catch something good, but to also bring some worms and a bobber setup to guarantee a fish. I took his advice and wished him a nice day which apparently boosted his luck a little bit more because he hooked into another one shortly afterwards.u00a0
With all of countless activities and the peacefulness that Wash Park has to offer, makes me really look forward to coming back to this place for my next site journal. My next plan of action is to obtain all of the necessary fishing gear, fishing buddies, and dope tunes to make my next visit a memorable one. Wish me luck so hopefully I can catch a biggun as the highlight for my next journal.u00a0