February 16th, 2021

Last Friday's hike will forever, at least in my mind, be known as The Hike of the Unexpected.    I mean, even just to begin with, we hiked on a different day than usual.  Friday instead of Wednesday.  That's because of scheduling conflicts.  We are flexible so it's not a problem.  However, we were unprepared for the much larger number of other folks on the trails.  Generally, we are pretty much out there alone so even one other person is more than usual.  Perhaps it's because it was a Friday and I know that sometimes people will take a Friday off to have a long weekend.  And the following Monday was Presidents Day and some people have that day off so what the heck, make it a 4-day weekend woohoo!  No matter the reason,  there was an unexpected number of other people out hiking with us that day. Not crowded, please understand, but certainly more than expected.

The next surprise has to do with the photo at the top of the page.  Hiking along, minding our own business when much to our surprise, there was a rusted out, old tractor trailer abandoned on the side of the trail!  What?  Why on earth was that ever there?  And why was it abandoned?  Mysteries abound!  We found no answers but had a great time speculating!  And taking lots of photos.  Joy was secretly hoping to find a little mousie nest tucked in somewhere but, alas, none to be found.

The next unexpected find was a bit of serendipity.  We know that this particular preserve has both hiking trails and biking trails.  Everyone is allowed on both but generally speaking  each sticks to their own.......except where they cross.  Every once in awhile, the bike trail will cross the hiking trail so we always knew it was possible for a bike to come zooming across in front or or behind us, but we had never actually seen it happen before.  Until this hike.  And it happened right near the sign. And in the proper order  just like on the sign! Too Funny!  HAHAHA!

Then we saw this, which was certainly unexpected.  Because I was spying it through the trees I wasn't absolutely certain what I was seeing. And in fact my first thought was, "That's not a tree....is it?"  It was initially just a peek a boo view through an area thick with very large trees, but eventually as we came closer it became clearer that it was definitely NOT a tree.  Not sure just what it was, but definitely not a tree.  AND there was no path through to it either. So maybe those who use it just materialize on top of it at their whim?  No idea.

We were surprised, but pleased to see that dragonflies have returned!  Yay!  Haven't really seen many in awhile but there were a few that day.  Most of them were very small, very quick and nearly impossible to capture. But there were a few larger (and slower) ones.  I managed to get these.  Yay!

​Two sad unexpected things I came across were this squished but very pretty bug and a pile of feathers. I don't want to even know who that pile of feathers originally was. Yucky.

As per usual there were lots of birds:

And of course you had to know that there would be flowers and other flora. I'm seeing more flowers now that it's "spring" here and that always makes me happy

 I suppose the next surprise might be the new trails we found.  We always think that we have pretty much hiked them all, but lo and behold, new trails! Coolio!  And of course some truly awesome trees.  They go hand in hand.

And a couple of other uncategorizable things, which are always unexpected:

So there you have it, the hike of the Unexpected.  Oh, I suppose every hike reveals things we didn't expect, which is part of the fun. But this was exceptionally unexpected stuff.  There were actually more surprises, things I did not manage to capture on camera. Like the deer that crashed across the trail so quickly that neither of us had time to even lift our cameras to attempt a photo. It was just crashing noise and then a deer butt disappearing into the forest on the other side.  Or the heron that we could hear but not see even though we kept looking and then suddenly there it was, flying over head and poof gone. Dang! Too Quick!   Stuff like that.

Anyway, thanks for coming along. Always enjoy your company.

​Hugs all 'round