April 07th, 2022

For the first time in just shy of a month, Joy and I went out on a photo safari yesterday!  YAYAYAYAY!  So today, this is the It's Nice To Be Back Hike!  Obviously, therefore, this is a photo safari report.  And thank you to Joy for the photo at the top of the page :)

We did a relatively short local hike to kind of ease back into it.  Which turned out to be a great plan because Curry Creek - the preserve we were hiking - was gorgeous.  It was a beautiful morning, a little cloudy at first, a little breezy perhaps, but still a lovely springy sort of day.

We learned something yesterday.  Well I suppose it's something that we always knewbut yesterday during our hike, we actually officially discussed it.   Instinctively, whenever we stop to observe or take a photo of one thing, we also make it a point to really look around the place where we are stopped.  Yes we got the photo we were after, but now what else is in the area?  In this way, we often discover other things, photo worthy, that we probably would not have noticed if we weren't already stopped.    (What is she talking about?)

Well for instance.  We saw a dragonfly and stopped to see where it would land.  Got that shot (yay)

And because we were already at a dead halt looking around, we saw the cutest little lady bug:

We probably would never have seen that itty bitty bug if we weren't already at a dead halt.  And it kept happening over and over throughout the hike.  

We might see a bird for instance (we saw many) 

Which, in turn, helps us to notice some flowers, tiny delicate little blossoms that are easily over looked:

Of course there was also the caterpillar mine field to traverse.   It's the time of year.  Spring means caterpillars. And they practically carpetted the ground. I'm not joking. We took turns looking down on the trail.  If one of us was close to treading on one, the other would yell out freeze:  (That's Joy in state of Freeze to allow a caterpillar the right of way on the trail)

They caterpillars are adorable little critters, all furry and hungry and moving surprisingly fast:

Turns out that these particular caterpillars are of the echo moth.  Which eventually will look like this:

Funny how such a brightly coloured caterpillar will turn into a relatively neutral coloured moth eh? Mother Nature is a funny girl.

What else did we see?  Well,  my goodness, the perserve itself of course with all the trees and trails and beautiful sky

Some seriously goofy squirrels:

The birds playing hide and seek:

Almost everything is now green green green.  Well, almost everything.  There's always those rebels;

I guess that kind of sums up most everything, except perhaps the rando file.  You know how I feel about that one:

It's nice to be back :)