Hiking the Upper Cove was not the plan. In fact, we had hoped to hike in the lowland wetlands of Cove Spring Park, along the Penitentiary Branch waterway – a birding hotspot with the promise of Wood Ducks and other wetland species. But when we arrived we found that the entire parking lot for the Wetlands Trail had become a staging area for an ongoing, thirty month, sewer system repair project.
With me sulking, and us behind schedule, we decided to walk a collection of trails that form a loop in the Upper Cove area of the park – Sky Trail, Old Farm Lane Trail, Peak’s Mill Trail, and Osage Trail. They did not appear to have the promise of the Wetland Trail, but we decided to accept what nature would deliver.
The formal Cove Spring Park consists of two areas, the Lower Cove which is on the former site of the first Frankfort Waterworks that started in 1804, and the Upper Cove, which includes the former 130 acre Fincel family farm, that was purchased in the 1990s with funds from Kentucky’s Heritage Land Conservation Grant program. So in a sense these two areas could be considered a “preserve” – as much a preserve of Frankfort history, as the nature that now calls it home. In addition, there is the less formal Wetlands area that we were unable to hike, that is separate from the other two, but just a short drive away…