March 09th, 2020

Another Dragonfly Photo?  Yup!  Got this one last Thursday when Joy and I managed to carve out time in both of our crazy lives to hike twice in one week!  Woohoo!  And the second time we did a duet.  That is two separate parks on the same day!  It. Was. Awesome.

First of all, it was a gorgeous day.  Sunny but not hot and not humid. And then of course, the photo worthy shots were abundant.  I took nearly 300 pictures that day and Joy took even more.  Wow!  Of course once I got home and started going through them I whittled it down quite a bit.  I am probably the most critical person that will ever judge my work and I get a little delete happy sometimes.  Oh well.

Joy had seen my post on the visit Tim and I made to Ollie's Pond Park and, as it turns out, she had never been there so that was our first stop.  There was only one other car in the parking lot so we assumed that we would be very much alone.  We were not just wrong about that, we were wrongity wrong.  Apparently, the people who live nearby walk over and enjoy it too and we don't blame them a bit.  But we did get a lot more questions and conversation with strangers than we usually get.  So that was new.

But it was all good. Have you ever recommended something to someone because you ate it or saw it or visited it and thought it was awesome, and then the person who recommended it to did it (on your recommendation) and hated it, thought it was terrible and now thinks you are crazy?  That is always a concern at the back of my mind when I specifically recommend something.  And it was when we went to Ollie's Pond Park especially since, at first, there really wasn't much to see worth snapping.  And in my head I'm thinking...Oh Crap.  I didn't want Joy to be disappointed with a place I thought was so amazing.

But then suddenly, every bird in the area showed up. Holy Cats!  I even saw my very first stork.  I mean in person.  They look nothing like the cartoons of them by the way.  

We spent a very long time walking around this pond.  It's only a mile and we were there for over an hour.  But there were so many things that we had to just stop and watch.  One of my favourites was the birdbath.  

And then there was my favourite photo of the day.   Sssshhhh!  He's sleeping.

We walked, we stood, we crouched and we peeked into shrubbery.  We peered up into trees and peeked over deadfall and squelched through the wetter areas.  We hid in the undergrowth and sometimes just sat on the ground to get our photographs.

Ollie's Pond Park turned out to be a big hit!  YAYAY!  

But we weren't done.  We continued on to a park that was unexplored by either of us.  Audubon Pennington Nature Park was only a few miles away so that was our next stop.

The two parks couldn't have more more unalike!    Audubon Pennington was like a forest primeval.  The trail was wonderful, very nicely kept  with rustic and very clear markers that smacked of about the 1950's.

I have never seen so many ferns anywhere and they were enormous.  Some were taller than Joy!

We saw Cypress Knees in the swamp which are just the craziest-coolest things ever

And a bee swarm!  I have never EVER seen that before.  We were in no danger. The bees were not remotely interested in us.

And all sorts of other coolio stuff:

We were gone for hours!  It was a great duet of hikes, we got some terrific shots and had the chance to spend the marjority of a day together talking, laughing, walking and making the most of a wonderful day.

All too  soon Joy and Bob will be heading back to Yellowstone again so we will take advantage of every opportunity we can get until then.

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