Princess Place

My last full day in Florida. I had been hearing about Princess Place Preserve. It was just a couple miles north of where I am staying.
To get to the preserve, Exit 298 of I-95. South on US1 about a mile. Turn Left onto old Kings Highway. Take that for 1.5 miles. The road (dirt - sand) road is on you left.
Walk the grounds. Take a look at the old Lodge and Lodge Stable. In the stable, I found brochures about the preserve (including a map). In this area of the preserve you are in a large grove of live oak trees.
I did not take the time to walk some of the hiking trails. Took the time to drive the Loop Road. Along the Loop Road there's a open area. There is an eagle nesting area. I could not see the nest.
After the "tour" of the preserve, I gassed up the car for the return trip. Stopped in at the bike shop (PC Bike) to thank them for the shop rides. If you get into Palm Coast, stop in to see Jake, Kelly, James, and Diane - "your hike shop".

Summer Mem'ries...

Mom today: for the last couple of months, I've been searching for old photos of family enjoying summers at a place we went to each year. My mother and sister are compiling family stories and photos for a book that will be published by next summer. I found many pictures that I took as a girl, teen and adult, chronicling decades of summers spent at "Camp Togus" or "Camp Killoquah" in the Adirondack mountains of upper New York state.
My parents loved black labs - here is Cleo, who, along with other family dogs, got into all kinds of trouble in the wild woods up here!
The boathouse and dock: where we cast off for lovely paddles, where we fished from, from where we dove into those velvety black waters and emerged totally refreshed!
A paddle on Forked Lake.
Secret fishing places... So many beautiful places there - lost to us today, but wonderful memories will linger forever! Have a super Friday!

Annie's

The Blount county bloggers met at Annie's over the weekend! Her job may be a pain, but it has made Annie Linda-Hamilton-buff.
I'm so jealous. I'd do anything to look like Annie. (Except eat well and get a lot of exercise.) If I'm found dead next week, it'll be due to Annie killing me for showing this. But the light was so nice, I couldn't resist.
Also present were CPP and TCE. We should have taken a pic of all our feet together or something, but of course I had that idea on the way home. Maybe next time, when I hope that MM can join us too.
These photos were all taken on our "weed walk" at Annie's place.

Pink phlox. I can't provide scientific names for most plants blooming after April, since they all seem to have 50 look-alikes that vary only in the slightest details.

Great Spangled Fritillary (Speyeria cybele) on Blanket Flower.

Whorled loosestrife (Lysimachia quadrifolia).

Collection of colored glass from Arkansas.

Sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis).

Mexican Hat. This and the Blanket flower aren't natives here, but are good plants for butterflies and quail. Update: I think I was wrong about them not being natives.

One of the skullcaps, possibly Hairy skullcap (Scutellaria elliptica).

A daylily I can't remember the name of.

Possibly a summer bluet? I'm not familiar with this plant and can't find a picture that matches well.

A fern I couldn't identify.

The lovely Lika.

The lovely Grendel.
Thanks for having us over, Annie! It was great to meet you, TCE and CPP!

It's a buoy! Real-time data comes to Indiana

The lonely life of buoy 45007. (Photo from noaa.gov)

For many years, buoy 45007 has been an only child in Lake Michigan. Located 45 nautical miles east-southeast of Milwaukee, it provides vital data about wind speed, wave height, and air and water temperature. But it's up there and we're down here.

The Harrison-Dever crib provides local wind and air temperature readings. (Photo from openwaterchicago.com)

We get real-time data from the Harrison-Dever crib, which provides wind speed and air temperature. But its sensors are airborne, so it doesn't provide water temperature or wave height. For wave height, we rely on computer models, extrapolation and observation. (See our list of wave and weather sites to the right.)

TIDAS 900, the new kid on the block, er, lake. (Photo fromiseagrant.org)

But now we have a new real-time data source: the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant Michigan City Buoy. The Tidas 900 buoy is owned and operated by the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and the Purdue University Department of Civil Engineering. It's the first buoy in Indiana and provides a data point further south in the lake and far closer to Chicago.

We'll be watching it tonight, when the marine forecast calls for gusts to 30 knots and waves of 8 to 12 feet. Its data won't tell us exactly what's happening on our side of the lake, but it will give us one more solid data point and, no doubt, inspire us to zip over and paddle with Keith Wikle when the conditions there exceed our own.

And Now For Some Bat Talk

We learned about bats today.
I'm volunteering to drive on all the field trips now since I'm one of those stay at home ladies now. Although I'm not really a lady according to Lulu. Ladies wear high heeled shoes and lipstick and do their hair up and wear dresses. I'm just a woman she tells me. I just do stuff. Women do stuff and ladies get dressed up.
Today we went to the Oakland Museum to the Bat exhibit.
I felt a little sleepy the whole time. They keep it too dark in there.
Except in the bat cave. Yeah, we went through the bat cave. And we met a bat lady, who has live bats that live at her house. She brought some live bats she'd rescued for us to look at. And they were kind of cute.

On the way back to school, the five kids in my car argued about what a "goth" is. Apparently only teenagers are "goth". And they're mean looking. And you're not supposed to look at them too long or you turn to stone. It was all news to me.
Next week I start swimming. It's been a while since I swam. I swam competitively growing up. But now, well, you know. The most I've swum in the last year is during a few hot summer days during the 10 minute adult swim, while stopping every 2 laps to make sure my kids aren't running wild around the pool.

So recently there was a tri-relay team missing a swimmer, so I volunteered to do the swim leg. Now I need to start building some endurance up for the race in May. I'm thinking it'll be good for the lungs and it'll get rid of my tricep flabbers and it'll be good for the start of the summer bikini season.
Yes, those are my reasons.
The only problem is that I'm blind as a bat without glasses. So when I swim I can't see the walls very well and my flip turns are out of wack. Good thing they have those big black lines in the pool. At least I can go straight.
But really my favorite part is getting in the nice warm steamy water on cold rainy days and just swimming and swimming. I swam for a few days during the last rain storm when I didn't want to ride in the rain, and it felt great. Like a nice long stretch.

Wrap Up Warm, Wellies On

I thought you might like to see another of our favourite walks, this time down past the fishing pond and across the Great Eau to the far bank where we will meander along to the fields of Belleau.

Come on, Gran!

This river feeds into the local trout farm and has private fishing rights. It makes for a wonderful walk - or, as Harry preferred to call it today 'A Bear Hunt', with hungry trolls under all the bridges. Luckily we met neither.
In the last couple of weeks they have done a lot of tree work along here, so we wanted to see the results.

We plodged through the mud, much to Harry's delight.Past the tiny cottage with the bright red door.On around the bend in the river, until we could see Belleau in the distance.You can just see the lovelyBelleau Church Towerin the distance, with the old dovecote in the foreground.No trolls under this one!Small signs of spring everywhere.(Unfortunately I forgot my specs, so we were back to point and click, sorry)Then we found a lovely muddy puddle to wash our wellies, before going home!

Fox Family

We finally saw the foxes! Jessica and I went to watch the den early this morning. After 3 previous unsuccessful attempts at seeing the foxes at various other times of the day, I was confident that being there first thing in the morning would give us the best chance. This time of year that means getting up pretty early. We left the house at 5:00 AM so we could be at the den in time for sunrise. We arrived at 5:40 and right away before we had even stopped the truck Jessica noticed one of the kits peeking out of the den. She only saw him for an instant. We waited maybe 5 minutes then he came out again and this time walked around a little bit. This was before either of the adults had come around. After 2 or 3 minutes the kit went back into the den and there was no activity for quite a while.



About 30 to 40 minutes later dad showed up with a piece of meat. We couldn't tell what sort of animal the meat was from, since it was just a hunk of flesh, but when he showed up two kits came running out of the den to grab the food. We only saw 2 kits, so that makes this a small litter unless there had already been others that didn't survive. For the next 45 minutes both kits were in and out of the den, chasing each other and playing. 4 times dad brought in pieces of food for them. The last time he came in with food, it was a huge rabbit. It still had all 4 legs attached, but it looked like the rump had been chewed off. The more aggressive of the two kits chased the other one away from the rabbit, then proceeded to tug at the meat and try almost unsuccessfully to drag the rabbit into the den by himself. At first he couldn't budge it but after several tugs managed to pull it inside the den. Once the rabbit and both kits were back in the den, dad took off for another round of hunting. We ended up with about a 45 minute show of fox activity. It sure was a fun way to start the day!