A nice day for a walk

Ichabod and I decided to go for a walk today. Usually when I post pictures of the river it's from an area where I need to drive in order to get there. This spot is easy walking distance.

We started off walking down the railroad tracks. Then we had to go down a sharp slope with lots of loose rocks. We both made it down without hurting ourselves. This is when I started taking pictures. Here's the entire set. I promise I won't post that many pictures here.

There's a willow that looks like it tipped over and one of the branches turned into the main trunk.


After I took that one Ichabod volunteered to stand on it too show the actual size. He's really good about letting me take his picture.
This one looks really cool in the Large version if you want to click on it and choose All Sizes.








Honeysuckle with the train bridge behind it.


Wintercress


I like this one of the boat in the large size.


There were a lot of people out walking dogs today, too.


This little guy was pretty patient.


He was waiting for his friend to stand still long enough so I could get her picture.




I really like the trunk on this willow.


More cool, twisted wood. This one also looks better in the large size.


Quite a few folks out on bikes today.


The highlight of the trip for me, though, was getting shots of a Scarlet Tanager. I'm not sure I've ever even seen one before.


Most of them were blurred, but a couple were sharp enough to get these crops.




And, of course, it wouldn't be the river without boats and water.

Met a new goal that I didn't know I'd set

I did something today that I've never done before. My department had a 5K run/walk and I participated. I didn't run, but still, walking three miles quickly is not something I've tried before.

This time last year I was still trying to heal from that stupid fall in March. Since I'm not athletic in the least, I have to say that I'm pretty proud of my 48 minute finish for 3.1 miles. I didn't win any prizes, but I did prove to myself that I could do it.

We'll see how I feel tomorrow. But tonight, after a couple of shots of Glenfiddich, I'm feeling pretty good.

Some kind of apple

I don't know what kind of apple tree this is but I love to see the flowers every spring. I'm glad I took the pictures yesterday because today it rained really hard and the flowers are mostly on the ground. Yesterday's weather was so perfect that I didn't do anything to fix the color on these shots. They really look best in large size, so if you click on the picture and choose All Sizes you can see better detail.









This one is my computer background. It's perfect because the blue sky on the left gives plenty of room for my desktop icons.

Contemplative Garden

When I took these pictures in my friend's garden I thought of Here Today Gone Tomorrow. Instead of mixing these in with the flower pictures I thought I'd post them alone.









Flower pictures coming up in the next post...