Stenotrophomonas Has Me Back Hiking From The Summit Of Mount Tandy With Washington & Texas Earthquakes

Yesterday I hiked the Tandy Hills for the first time in a week or  two or three.

I cut back on my Tandy Hills hiking for two reasons.

One being I was not liking the HOT heat as much as I have summers previous in Texas.

The other reason is I was no longer feeling welcome parking on the summit of Mount Tandy, which necessitated driving over the bumpy Meadowbrook Drive, which has been being worked on in slow motion for a long time, to get to the View Street access to the Tandy Hills.

On yesterday's blogging about hiking the Tandy Hills I said....

I walked Tandy Highway for the first time since, for some unknown reason, the summit of Mount Tandy was peppered with No Trespassing, No Parking, No Loitering, No This That and Other Things Signs. Few people used this as a parking location. Why did anyone go to the bother of putting up all those signs?

To which Tandy Hills hiking aficionado, Stenotrophomonas, commented with some valuable, to me, information...

Stenotrophomonas has left a new comment on your post "HOT High Speed Tandy Hill Hiking On The Last Day Of August": 

The "no trespassing" signs went up after some fool was using the land north of the cop shop to spin some donuts. Chesapeake, fearing that some vehicle would end up as a Tandy Hills curiosity, while its owner engaged a hungry lawyer, put up the signs, whose phone number will ring in Oklahoma. Being Chesapeake, they also put up a sign south of the road, on land it did not own. But that's OK with me - once I saw a jeep full of morons go tearing south along one of the trails there near the old TV station. But the signs only cover Chesapeakistan land; Broadcast Hill is a public roadway. 

After Stenotrophomonas informed me the No Trespassing signs were Chesapeake nonsense only affecting the Chesapeake land Chesapeake bought, long ago, when Chesapeake still believed it could poke holes in the ground anywhere it wanted to in Fort Worth, I knew it was safe to park at my regular Tandy Hills location without being prosecuted for trespassing.

Which is why at the top you see a photo of my motorized hiking delivery vehicle parked on the summit of Mount Tandy.

I felt compelled to return today, once I learned it was okay to do so. I felt so good after yesterday's hiking induced endorphins that another dose today seemed like a mighty fine idea. I think I may be going Tandy Hill hiking day after day after until I lose all the extra weight which has been dragging me down.

I have said I was done with that taking a selfie thing. But then as I walked west from the summit of Mount Tandy, on the old wagon train trail which heads towards Fort Worth, I felt compelled to once again try and take a selfie, with the stunning skyline of beautiful downtown Fort Worth behind me.

Well.

This time the location of the sun was such that looking at the phone camera's screen it was reflected back at me like looking in a mirror, with me unable to see what the camera lens was seeing.

So, I gave up and continued on my way. A couple miles later I came upon the new Tandy Hills outdoor lecture room where I sat on one of the classsroom's slightly shaded benches.

I got out the phone again. This time, with the shade, I was able to see what  the camera was seeing, for the most part.

Now, this is the final selfie, unless I change my mind. Maybe on a cloudy day.

Changing the subject to something totally different.

Eastern Washington was shaken by an earthquake today. I learned this via a headline which said "A light 4.27 magnitude earthquake was detected today near Grand Coulee Dam."

Having experienced strong earthquakes, I think the strongest was a 6.5, it  has long amused me how the Texas locals get all shook up by gas drilling caused quakes of a small magnitude, like 2.1. I think maybe one or two have gotten somewhere in the 3 something range.

Now, having said that I must also say that a 2.1 quake can be quite jarring, if you are near the epicenter. A couple years before I moved to Texas there was a multi-month period of light quakes in the 2 to 3.0 range, epicentered at Big Lake, a couple miles east of my abode. Those quakes were jarring. I remember during one of them I was laying on my waterbed and about got tossed to the floor by the ocean motion. Another time I was watching TV when one hit, scaring me bad due to how the windows all seemed to flex inward, and the tall fir trees outside shook violently. During that one I heard loud cracking which I soon learned was caused by the quake causing the tile in my kitchen to break in one long fault line.

Those 2-3.0 range Big Lake quakes that I experienced have long had me perplexed as to why people here in Texas, near the epicenter of the local light quakes do not describe it as scary, as doing damage or as being noisy. Earthquakes are very noisy.

Back to the Tandy Hills. If you have never seen an earthquake fissure and have always wanted to, haul yourself to the Tandy Hills. The dried out trails have what look like earthquake fissures in many locations.

Be careful not to trip on one like I did today....