Adventuring to Hell's Gate

Ahem.

The story goes that some girl, long ago, tried to summon Satan in a place nicknamed Hell's Gate, because at night you could hear whispers and voices through the trees. She hung herself between two rocks, and haunts the place ever since, making people crazy or killing people or pooping on your pillow while you're away or something. This place is rumored to be in Dunbar Historical Park.

This is the place I tried to find on this expedition. My goal was finding those rumored rocks and seeing for myself what about this place was interesting. Of course, it didn't occur to me to bring an actual camera, or wear decent outdoorsy shoes, or bring some Off. 

So I drove on Parkway Drive for a while and turned in on East 7th. 

This is Hick's Solar Car Wash. It's $0.25 for, apparently, more time than regular car washes. Deserted, of course. But those are solar panels.

Driving further, I see

A place called Kwik-O-Food. Of all the things to name your gas station...

I arrive in the park near where I have to be. The parking lot is on a weird incline next to a fake-looking lake and fake-looking ducks.

Past the reeds, WIND POWER. 

The ground everywhere was soft and marshy. The last place you should ever take a pair of Chucks. The man in blue was there for the hour I was, walking back and forth across the hills to a guy in a white wifebeater. I was paranoid that they'd take my car. The treeline is where I'm headed.

Dunbar Jr. High? I think. The bells still ring, which is pretty eerie when nothing else makes a sound.

The plants that weren't trees were generally these. Fields and fields of these, in weird places.

It's impossible to tell where the dry ground meets the wet. Muddy shoes ahoy.

This would be the entrance, since there's really no realistic way to get in otherwise. There are impenetrable walls of trees and puddles fencing it off. The canopy of leaves knitted and blocked a lot of light. 

This is blurry, but the point is that all of the branches bent. Very few of the trees were completely upright.

Relief from the gloom. The sun came out when I got here, and I was suddenly aware of how many mosquitoes there were here.

The only sound here was that concrete thing, which looks deceptively small. It was about twelve feet above the concrete shrapnel below. 

More accurate colors.

Graffiti on the makeshift stairs. The slab it's on was about five feet long.

This looked like a person. Just creepy roots, though.

Like hell I was going to cross this. The gap it crosses was a four-yard fall. And there were shirts beneath it.

The way out. To the right was a concrete reservoir, the second here, full of jagged concrete icebergs.

The building next to Dunbar. Snore. I go back into the forested part.

Lubbock needs more of this. Dense, endless trees.

A road littered with notebooks and more of that concrete. It looked too loose to walk on.

... Thanks, Sonic. These cups were everywhere.

I hadn't noticed this, but it was another rusted spout drooling water embedded in the walls of the park.

A tree that resembled an ass. This was morbidly funny.

The clouds came back. So did the man in the blue shirt.

And so, I didn't find Hell's Gate, but I did have an interesting hike. Also, like a pint of blood was missing from me due to mosquitoes. 

The end.