Road Trip

On Friday Treebeard and I hit the road for a day trip. If you do much traveling in eastern NC, you're going to have to go over a lot of bridges. This particular bridge is the second longest in the state and crosses the Chowan River as it enters the Albemarle Sound.  We're on the middle in this photo.

 

Our destination was a state park a little over an hour to our south where we planned to attend a retirement luncheon for a friend.  If you're going to have a retirement luncheon this is the kind of place to hold it.

 

 See that sycamore tree with the hole near the base? Somewhere amongst the family photos there is a picture of me with my two sons inside that tree. Maybe one of these days I'll dig it out, scan it and post it for you.

Following the festivities we decided we had better take a walk to better digest the barbeque and ribs we had stuffed ourselves with -- not to mention the perfectly awesome cafe mocha brownies a co-worker had baked. OMG.

Of course, when Treebeard and I take a walk there is always a lot of stopping and poking about so I'm not too sure we accomplished much in the way of burning calories...but we enjoyed ourselves and that's what really matters.

But enough chatter...on to the photos:

Somewhere under all those fennel leaves there is a caterpillar. It will grow up to become one of the emerald moths, but for now it is hoping you won't notice it.

Leaf-cutter bees were having a big time in the jewelweed. They had cut and carted off many a little circle of green leaf.

 

Something slithered near my feet as we were walking along a canal. I stepped in a little closer to see what it was and surprised this black racer. He turned to dash away and landed himself in thick mud. Racers don't do mudding very well. We watched him to make sure he made it out of the muck. I guess we would have drawn straws to see who went in after him if he got too bogged down ;)

 

A few yards down, where the canal empties into the lake, we got to see evidence of someone going in the mud after their dog...

 

Don't you love the perfect butt print they left behind?

 

We saw plenty of tracks in the mud. Whatever made these tracks fared much better than the person who went in after the dog ;)

 

Yikes! I'll have to stop here and pick this back up tomorrow. It's nearly bedtime and I must get up early in the morning...oh, stop laughing - I know you checked the time stamp when I said it was nearly bedtime and saw that I posted this at quarter to 10. You have to understand that that's late for us...