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Monday, April 26, 2010

13 April 2010 Still Walking Flat Trails




Sunday, April 25, 2010

12 April 2010 Beartown Lakes





11 April 2010 Sandy Ridge and Sheldon Marsh


It was a perfect day for watching migratory birds. I was moving slowly and got a little dizzy whenever I looked up, but it was still fun to watch.











Monday, April 19, 2010

10 April 2010 A Brief Escape








For the first three months of 2010 my monthly step averages were:
January 9742
February 9714
March 10065

Before Friday morning my average for the month was 14164. I was on a roll. I was happy and finally getting out and getting some exercise. On Friday morning, the flu struck with a fever of 104 and a whopping 1409 steps for the day. By Saturday afternoon, I had cooled down to 103, and it was time for a walk. If I can't make a mile around Metzenbaum, I really have problems. A usual 10-15 minute walk took over an hour. Ali was super patient with me and let me rest, but it was great to be out. A few flowers, a little exercise and back to bed.
7 April 2010 An Evening at Sunnybrook



6 April 2010 Ansel's Cave and Sunset Overlook






5 April 2010 The Rookery Near Quarry Rock







During the winter, the naturalist for Cleveland Metroparks showed me this area. We were looking for a new place to hide a cache and she knew of this rookery. The last time they walked out and counted, there were 30 nests. This evening Ali counted 41. It was a truly awesome sight.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

4 April 2010 Spring Wildflowers and Our Vernal Pond








Our vernal pond has four different types of eggs this spring, wood frogs, green frogs, red efts, and spotted salamanders. The pond was being guarded by two wood frogs while some red efts were in the pond eating frog eggs. It's really busy for a small pond.



Friday, April 16, 2010

3 April 2010 Feeding the Fish in St. Mary's




Sunday, April 11, 2010

Flu


It's been a long time since I had a fever of 104. I felt tired for a couple of days and really beat Friday morning. I needed to go to the office for a meeting and was going to call it a day a little early. By 10 I couldn't stop shaking and decided to go home. My fever's been running its course, down to 103 by Saturday, 101 something today. Other than last year at Shenandoah, I can't remember being off-line for over 48 hours in years. I can't remember effectively being in bed for 32 hours. My temp keeps dropping and there's images somewhere to post so maybe in a day or so... Ali's been amazing with two males in the house (Sandy the cat) both being sick.


Tuesday, April 06, 2010

2 April 2010 Forest County


We hadn't planned to be in Forest County today. We were planning to be out finishing the first half of the Enchanted Mountain GeoTrail in Cattaraugus County. We were loading the gps's in the morning and realized that one of the two remaining EMGT caches was disabled. We missed the other remaining cache last fall when the cache owner disabled it for hunting season. Besides the wonderful counties we got to visit, one of the best things about the Allegheny Geotrail is that cachers weren't required to find ALL the caches to be eligible for a coin. The one that is disabled now doesn't appear to be going active before mid-May. We really enjoyed the EMGT last year, but there is a limit to how much tourism groups can be expected to make cachers spend before awarding coins. We're re-thinking doing the EMGT at all this year.

The EMGT's loss was our gain. We made a last minute decision to head to Forest County for some caching. It is a neighboring county that always seems to have unfound caches for us. Our major target was a friend's cache, Water Your Horse. Water Your Horse is friends' 5 terrain cache we never seem to drive out and find. There have been so many days when we could have and should have, but today we did. I'm sure there are many great days in any given year to find this gem, today seemed perfect to us.


Water Your Horse

It was quite a day for frogs






There is something quite calming about being in the woods alongside a stream.





We crossed the stream here.






This old viaduct was just before a long, gone bridge that crossed the stream.





It's hard to believe that this old, dirt road once carried car traffic. At least one car didn't make it across the bridge. It used to be light blue.





The pool in front of this riffle is quite large and very deep.





The latest in campground leisure furniture, the Adirockdack chair with matching table





Ali said the chair she is modeling actually was set-up to recline.







After our adventures at Water Your Horse, we made a few more finds in the ANF near Amsler Spring before making our way home.






This iron work was a flower on a large arch over a dirt road leading into the woods. There still appears to be a structure at the back. The arch seemed a real contrast to the surrounding forest.