27 July 2019 Columbus Parks

Our prior evening's visit to Glaciar Ridge Metropark gave us the unpleasant feeling of meeting a new pest, oak mites. I've had multi-state chigger encounters so the mites were a new twist of things you find while living an active outdoor life. They were unpleasant for me. They made Ali miserable. We soldiered on and visited a few more Columbus Metroparks through the day. We enjoyed some wonderful wildlife spotting and some fun geocaching while trying to ignore the persistent reminders of the oak mites.

This was the largest eastern rat snake we have seen. It was at the edge of the largest size for the species. Luckily, they are harmless.

In the US, unless you have been unlucky and found a coral snake, those round eyes are a tell-tale sign a snake is non-venomous.

Highbanks had a very well done old school multi.  The second stage of this 2012 cache was the only one of this type we have found in fifteen years of caching.  The multi starts at the Adena Mound.

We also spotted a number of nodding trilliums which despite being long past blooming were great to know as a spring wildflower we could see in bloom if we were in the Columbus area in the spring. 

Sharon Woods was an odd looking park that resembled an old state park or Army Corps property with a camping registration station at the entrance.  Once we hit the trails it gave the best wildlife viewing of the day.

We visited a couple more parks before finally giving in to the constant itching of the oak mites.