What a Beautiful Day to be Outside

On Saturday, the three of us drove to Mitchell State Park to see the hunting & fishing-themed Visitor Center (ho hum) and to hike around in the woods and alongside the wetland trail.

It was a beautiful day to be outside, sunny and warm, and the red-winged blackbirds were very vocal, calling to one another. We were fortunate to see many, many turtles sunning themselves on logs during our time in the wetland area, and even more fortunate to catch this family on film before they all went ploop, ploop, plooping into the water. We were all surprised by how many trees along the water’s edge had been gnawed into points by beavers.

It had been raining earlier in the week so there were several parts of the trail, early on, where we had to cross some rather large mud puddles by walking across downed logs. We all enjoyed doing this quite a bit and, luckily, none of us ended up with soggy sneakers. Further into the woods, it was drier so we spent our time marveling at the tall, tall second growth white pines and learned how to tell if a tree is a white pine (and not some other kind of pine) by counting the groupings of its needles. Five long needles in each bundle makes it a white pine. W-H-I-T-E…1-2-3-4-5. Lesson over, class dismissed.

Poor Dad though, he re-injured his ankle a few weeks back playing soccer and the 3+ mile hike around the wetlands trail and through the woods left him gimping pretty badly by the time we got back to the car. It probably didn’t make him feel any better when The Boy accidentally whacked him on the funny bone with the car door when we stopped for snacks… It really was an accident.

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