27 July 2019 Columbus Parks

Our prior evening's visit to Glaciar Ridge Metropark gave us the unpleasant feeling of meeting a new pest, oak mites. I've had multi-state chigger encounters so the mites were a new twist of things you find while living an active outdoor life. They were unpleasant for me. They made Ali miserable. We soldiered on and visited a few more Columbus Metroparks through the day. We enjoyed some wonderful wildlife spotting and some fun geocaching while trying to ignore the persistent reminders of the oak mites.

This was the largest eastern rat snake we have seen. It was at the edge of the largest size for the species. Luckily, they are harmless.

In the US, unless you have been unlucky and found a coral snake, those round eyes are a tell-tale sign a snake is non-venomous.

Highbanks had a very well done old school multi.  The second stage of this 2012 cache was the only one of this type we have found in fifteen years of caching.  The multi starts at the Adena Mound.

We also spotted a number of nodding trilliums which despite being long past blooming were great to know as a spring wildflower we could see in bloom if we were in the Columbus area in the spring. 

Sharon Woods was an odd looking park that resembled an old state park or Army Corps property with a camping registration station at the entrance.  Once we hit the trails it gave the best wildlife viewing of the day.

We visited a couple more parks before finally giving in to the constant itching of the oak mites.

26 July 2019 Weekend Getaway

Recent years have become almost impossible for me to have a vacation where work does not consume a significant part of the time.  This was the first day of a three-day weekend for us.  I had hopes of a great weekend.  Our plan for Friday was to travel to the prarie cemeteries to enjoy the wildflowers and hummingbirds with a few stops along the way.

We stopped for a virtual in a Marion cemetery.  The cemetery had some interesting areas including a large veterans section and a well done fake tree marker.

It was the first time we have seen a sculpture mounted atop a zinc monument.

The cemetery section across the road is home to Warren G. Harding's grave.  I was surprised to see it closed on a Friday afternoon.  It is a large, imposing structure, but for me lacks the beauty and dignity of James Garfield's tomb in Lakeview Cemetery.

After a return visit to the old Marion train station, we were on our way to the prairie Cemeteries.

Prairie blossoms and hummingbirds were in abundance this evening as we made our first prairie stop at Bigelow Cemetery.

When we arrived at Smith Cemetery, these two daring acrobats were in the air.  I'm sure nothing could go wrong with lawn-mower powered flying machines.  😟

Unlike it's counterpart, Smith has never been the hummingbird magnet.  We stopped to enjoy the flowers and read a few markers.

Our day wasn't over yet as we headed for a stop at Glacier Ridge Metropark.  The park was setting up for an evening of sky gazing while we found our first cache at the renewable energy exhibit and played with the interactive pieces.  We also spotted a super tiny frog while signing the log at the cache in the area.  It's easy to generate a reasonable amount of power using the hand crank on the turbine.  Sustaining that power generation for any time is not so easy.

Our last cache of the evening was at an old truck that probably died in a tree collision when this was still a farm.  It has tires so I was interested.

We still needed to check in and were both hungry so we left the night sky activities behind and settled for the sunset.

24 July 2019 North Chagrin Wildflowers

It was a perfect evening for a awalk through the wildflowers in North Chagrin.

I've never noticed bees appearing to settle at a plant for sleeping.  There were dozens of bees nestling into the monarda as a we were walking back to leave.

20 July 2019 Bike Ride

I was finally able to get out and take a bike ride this afternoon.

I used the ride as a reason to check on a cache we were planning to archive.  I also brought along a new container to hopefully find a nice spot to hide a new cache.  The water was flowing heavily around the old cache which made reaching the old hide location a big challenge.

My stopping point is usually a fun place to visit the Allegheny and walk a bit of shore.  Today the water was in a low flood stage and access was not going to happen.