25 August 2019 Green Heron

We were out for a favorite walk along the Allegheny River.  Our return along an old railroad grade takes us past a wetland.  Most of the summer we've had spottings of great blue and green herons.  Today we were able to approach and watch a green heron.

Out fishing....

Success!

At least the turtles had nothing to fear from the hungry heron.

We finished our walk looking for wildflowers along the old railroad grade.

24 August 2019 Visiting Quehanna

We had set aside the afternoon to walk the gamelands area in Quehanna.  We were walking the trails to search for geocaches placed by a recently deceased cacher.  His hides have taken us to wonderful places including multiple visits to Quehanna.  Today was a quiet, pleasant visit to a special area.

A snail resting on one of our early finds.

The dogs are attracted to every stream.  This shady spot was a good place for Lizzie to cool off.

A molting warbler

We were on our way home when we spotted eight elk in a grassy area off the side of the road.  Besides being the most elk we had seen at once, this was a completely unexpected wonderful way to end the day.

22 August 2019 Hiking Monterrey

The timing worked for one evening hike on my visit.  We stopped for a different climb at a familiar park.  Pollution is a problem in the metro area. The mountain ring surrounding the area locks in the air from the vehicles and industry.  Tonight the cloud was pushing into the metro area.

I wasn't expecting to see these in the dry rocky climb.  There were many of them at the lower range of our hike.

This was a new trail for us.  It was quite steep in areas, but a pleasant hike.

I happened to look at my gps and noted there was an unfound cache at a slightly higher elevation.  We had talked that there was an old planetarium at the park.  I was surprised to find it was near the locations of the cache.

It would have been too much to happen upon this on an evening when it was open.  Still, it was a fun and unexpected discovery.  As usual, we didn't find the cache, but we had fun looking and exploring.

It was a long, dark walk back with just the lights of Monterrey as a guide.  We were treated to a sighting of three coatis.