26 April 2014 Enjoying Spring

We were spending some rare time in northeast Ohio. We planned to do some geocaching and attend an event, but mostly, we just planned to enjoy spring. Our day started at South Chagrin with a hunt for wildflowers. We have a nice area where there are large groups of bloodroot and trout lilies. The bloodroot was past its best, but we were able to see some prime trout lilies.

Our second stop was a long walk to visit the heron rookery at the southern end of South Chagrin's Quarry Rock area. We were shown this area a few years ago by a friend who's a CMP naturalist. The rookery is huge. Today there weren't a lot of herons about, but we were able to spot a few with young in the nests.

Over the years we haven't attended many CITO (cache in trash out) events as we would like. There are usually conflicts on CITO days. This afternoon a CITO in Reminderville fit our schedule and was a good way to give back to a community that supports geocaching. The park where we assembled was really clean when we arrived. There was another small section of park just down the road so we drove over and joined another local cacher to clean the area. This one had a lot of cleaning potential. Besides a few large trash bags of discarded beverage containers, we found trashed corrugated, plastic siding and some pvc plumbing that was long ago left behind. It was a fun time and we did a good deed.

After the CITO event, we went home and picked up the dogs. Our last stop was a walk at the Rookery in Geauga. We were hoping for lots of spring peepers and got them. We were also treated to a heron flying over and a pleasant end to a super day.

The day ends...