These are wild roses found on a hiking trail at Perry State Park, Ozawkie, Kansas. (About 20 miles northeast of Topeka.)

This was our first visit to this park.  We were visiting our son, Aaron, and his family in Topeka and decided to venture out for something new. We found an area of trails through the woods, grabbed a map, paid the park fee of $5 and started our hike.  The party included four adults and an 8-month old in his stroller.

These flowers greeted us at the very beginning of the trail. We made it about another minute before everyone started noticing ticks – lots of ticks – from the tiniest specs to the normal sized rascals.  An occasional tick is tolerable, but a couple of minutes into our walk they were crawling all over us.  We high-tailed it out of the woods and spent 15 minutes in the parking lot trying to remove the beasts.  We got most of them, but did find a couple when we got back home. Can’t imagine the ordeal we would have had is we hiked an hour or so.

It was too bad because all of us were looking forward to a little outdoor activity and I wonder what other beauties we might have missed.

If you look closely, you can see a spider’s legs on the flower on the right. Click the image to see a larger version.