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What a March.
Ah, late February, how long ago you were. I casually said in that post that I was wondering how seriously we should be taking Covid-19. It was already on my mind and had been since January. When I flew to Florida there were people with masks on and it didn’t take until I had a conversation with someone at Billy Goat Day for it to register why. And then the flight back home, other people with masks on. It wasn’t a lot but it was enough to think a little bit harder about the implications. Sometime around that post I told Chris we should add a few extra items to…
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Lepidopterans & Sunshine at Lake Somerville State Park
Yesterday I wanted to get out and do some hiking and thought it would be nice to head west to Lake Somerville State Park. We haven’t been there since I was pregnant with Forest in May 2014! Not for lack of interest, though. Every time we checked into going we would find the state park closed due to one of the various flooding events over the last few years. Harvey did a number on the parks and just within the last month was the Somerville Trailway between the two units open once again. Our last good hike on the trailway was in 2013 with our AT friend Redhat. Wanting to…
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A Decade Ago – Our Springer-aversary!
As this date started approaching I wondered how I was going to be able to write anything about it. And I find myself sitting here unable to really figure out what to say. Time flies. I miss the ability to be able to get up and do this sort of thing and yet my brain could definitely not focus on a thru-hike right now. I think I’ll come back here in a few weeks or later this year when our Katahdin anniversary comes up and see if I can write anything more. But I just wanted to commemorate this day by posting here. I love you, Appalachian Trail!
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Signs of Spring – Huntsville State Park
Camping two weekends ago at Huntsville State Park was pretty fantastic. The weather was gorgeous for late February and everywhere the signs were out that spring was coming and there was no stopping it. On Saturday we took a 7 mile hike around the lake and got to see what was blooming or beginning to push through the pine needles. Fox Squirrel, Sciurus niger – the squirrels at our campsite was all about looking for whatever scraps might be left from campers. One of them wanted to become our BFF and hop into the food containers which required constant vigilance even if we had the lids on to our food…
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White Pass and Yukon Route Railway
We arrived in Skagway, AK and had approximately 12 hours to do what we wanted. Our first thing on the agenda was to take the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway up to the Canadian border, cross it, and then turn around and come back down to Skagway. I’ve gotta say, all that made me want to do is take that train all the way to its final destination somewhere in the Yukon. You’ll see… We slowly choo-chooed through the eastern side of town, passing storage areas and seeing the back side of houses along the way. The Skagway River was gorgeous at the lower elevations. And then we slowly…
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A Fluttering Question
It seems the lepidopterans are ready, they are beginning to emerge from their various states of overwintering and become a little more active. We were camping at Huntsville State Park last weekend and we noticed several species out flying but I wasn’t able to get photos of any but this question mark, Polygonia interrogationis. The three of us took a 7 mile hike around Lake Raven and I opted to put my 75-300mm lens on for the duration of the hike just for this reason. Plus, it alleviated my need to bend down and take flower photos. And while I wasn’t able to get any other butterfly photos I was…
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Flora, Fungi, and Fauna along the Florida Trail in Bronson State Forest
Let’s wrap up my Florida trip with this final post from my hike at Bronson State Forest. Sand Heath, Ceratiola ericoides Rosemary scrub habitats in Florida are considered to be a particularly endangered habitat. It thrives in sandy, old inland dune habitats and prefers to have a good burn once in a while—and well, you can imagine that sandy habitats and burning can be in short supply when people build homes right on top of and up next to the perfect habitat. A few sites with more information: Scrub Rosemary via UCF Arboretum, Endemic Florida Rosemary via Florida State Parks, and Rosemary scrub via Florida Hikes. Deer Moss, Cladonia evansii…
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Raptor Leftovers
Every now and then a hike gets you a glimpse of something wild and interesting. In some areas maybe you get to encounter a large mammal—a bear, maybe a panther or bobcat. Sometimes you just get really cool animal interactions like the time we watched a bald eagle steal a fish from an osprey on the last day of our Florida Trail thru-hike. Occasionally you come across the weirder but still interesting animal presence such as this dead opossum we found on a hike at Huntsville State Park over the weekend. Since we travel at a 5.5 year old’s pace these days we had been stopping and slowing down, and…
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Life Lately | Late February 2020
Thinking: +About getting back into processing Alaska photos… +Super Tuesday–Go EW! +Trying to decide how panicky we should really be about Covid-19. I can’t help it, I keep wanting to call it Corvid-19. See corvid above. Really sounds like a Michael Crichton thriller. +Where did February go? If January was 10 months long, February was a week long. +I barely got anything done in February I wanted to do get done and I’m just now working on the major project I wanted go work on which was go through the pile of papers we had “to file” and figure out what really needed to be shredded and what needs to…
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Silent Sunday | Trout Lillies