Well, unfortunately, I got a $100 fine for staying at a park too late. I won’t disclose the name of this park, but it is a state park, and once it closes at a certain time they do close the gates. I accidentally misjudged the time I was staying on the hiking trail, and because of this mistake, I paid the price. The state park official actually warned me last time when the park closed at 7 pm a few weeks back when I stayed until 9 pm. Now, they recently changed the hours to 6 pm and it was 7:15 when I left. I do believe this ticket was unfair, but say what you will! I was warned, of course, but it really makes no sense that they would not allow people to hike. Heck, people camp in the woods, why can’t I hike? That’s all I was doing, just hiking! Also, I have seen bike riders a half-hour past closing. I left at around 6:15 and there were still hikers around near the parking lot. I kid you not! All I got to say is, they only picked on me because I was later than everyone else, even though most of the people well before I did.
In response to this ticket, I will just suffer the consequences and pay the fine. In addition, I will rip up the map to the park in a million pieces and delete the address from my car’s navigation system. I do NOT want to see or hear the name of that park ever again. I didn’t even have to go to this park. I did it only to explore things a little bit and get some exercise. It took me 2 and a half hours to drive to this stupid piece of shit park, so the amount of time wasted driving there isn’t even worth staying if I have to constantly worry about leaving at a certain time. I feel like everyone’s out to get me. One of these days, I’ll get a ticket for driving too slow on the highway, but I’ll make sure I get a good lawyer on my side if that happens. Next time I go hiking, I’ll just go to the local park here in Bordentown. The trail is very small, so I’ll just run around a few times to get my weekly exercise, then I’m done. It’ll save me the time and aggravation of driving countless hours to go to a bigger park that has the same features.