A refuge trail and a revelation

After a scrambled egg breakfast (need to be using things up from the fridge before they go bad), Emma and I headed out for Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge.  I stopped at the visitor’s center to get my NWR passport book stamped, and to find out about any hiking trails and the auto tour route.  For quite some time now I’ve been interested in purchasing another hooded sweatshirt with a zipper front.  The couple I have are getting rather worn and dingy.  It has been a fruitless quest up until today.  I found exactly what I was looking for at the visitor’s center, and it even has the refuge logo emblazoned on it.  The day was starting out well!

IMG_3623

The ranger gave me maps, and after seeing me hobble into the center suggested the Harmony Trail for a hike.  Turns out I’ve got a little ‘hitch in my get-a-long’ today.Disappointed smile  Growing older isn’t easy some days.  Besides, I could use a little harmony in my life right now.

IMG_3627

Harmony Trail is a one mile loop through mixed forest with a few ponds along the way.  It was a fine day for a hike in the woods.

IMG_3631

Emma was as happy as I to be out and about.  My hip suggested I take advantage of this bench about half way along to enjoy the pond view, and I listened.

IMG_3635

I also heard blue jays, squirrels, woodpeckers, and the crunching of leaves as Emma investigated all the new smells in the area.  When we got back to the car, I was ready to continue the auto tour route.  It’s really not as scenic as many refuge routes I’ve been on, but it’s a little early in the season for the migrating waterfowl to be here.

_MG_3637As we crossed the Wolf Creek Causeway over Crab Orchard Lake, there was an avian blockade straddling the road.

_MG_3642I wondered if these three were union officials sent to oversee the ring-billed gull picket line.  Smile  In a daring move, Emma and I crossed the picket line and continued our journey.

IMG_3650

The road soon ended, and we turned around to retrace our path.  Tomorrow some of the back roads will be open for self-guided tours, so we’ll probably be back.  It was an enjoyable morning well spent.

A while back when I was having a conversation with my son, Daniel, he was surprised that I could not access my DVR’d programs through DISH even though I didn’t have the satellite hooked up.  I didn’t think much about that until this afternoon.  The last few nights I’ve been watching a few DVD’s since the local stations don’t have much that I’m interested in.  Well, this afternoon I decided to see if I could access the DVR’d stuff without the dish set up, and it turned out I could.  What a revelation that was to me.  And to think, it only took five years for me to find that out.  Duh!

Oh yeah, the highlight of my day today was seeing a bobcat cross the road in front of me with a big ol’ rabbit in it’s jaws!  Cool beans!

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Noble Wedding at Andernach

Image
The Wedding of Princess Anna of Hohenzollern and Roman Goldschmith took place on 01.06.2013 at the maria Himmelfahrts Church at Andernach. Princess anna is a daughter of the late Prince Godehart of Hohenzollern and his wife Heide. Her great-grandfahter Prince Karl Anton of Hohenzollern bought in 1908 Namedy Castle in Andernach-Namedy which is still in Family posession. Therefore this is the seat of this branch of the Family. The Wedding on the Wedding Day was very cool and windy but luckily only very light rain.  The groom Roman Goldschmidt (left) with his witness   the brides's mother Princess Heide of Hohenzollern The bride's brother Prince Carlos of Hohenzollern  
Read more

A day of rest

Nothing exciting to report for today.  I decided not to do much of anything or go anywhere.  Due to the chillier temperatures from that cold front that moved through, I’ll be giving my fingers a bag balm treatment tonight since they’ve begun to crack again. When I got here, I didn’t set up the DISH, but just relied on the antenna for TV reception.  As I stood on the stool to crank it up, the crank fell out on the floor.  This happened last year, but my friend Denny was able to fix it for me.  Well, Denny isn’t around this year so I was stymied as to what to do.  I really didn’t want to climb up on the roof to see if it was sticking up at all, so I stood on the picnic table across the street and sure enough, it was up off of the roof.  Can you see the non-mechanical gears turning in my head?  I finally thought to get back on the stool with a pair of pliers and began turning the post that was sticking out of the ceiling.  I felt absolutely br...
Read more

It’s safe to park next to me now :)

Image
I was hoping to post pictures of how I do the salinity testing on the refuge tonight, but there was a fly in the ointment with that plan.  I’ll have to do that next week.  I picked up fellow volunteer, Jim, to take him along with me since I would be doing a back road that hadn’t had much use since hurricane Ike hit.  It turned out that the only pictures I could take were from the safety of the refuge vehicle.  We’ve got several white-tailed kites on the refuge right now. We did one test on the back road, but were accosted by thousands of mosquitoes.  I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, and had to put the hood up and pull the strings to only leave a small area open on my face.  My only other exposed skin was my hands.  After that one trip out of the suburban, we decided to forget about the rest of the tests.  I’ve never seen the mosquitoes that bad.  Sitting in the car, the windows were covered with them!  We itched our way down th...
Read more