Friday, May 8, 2020

Short Trips




With the quarantine, we haven’t traveled overnight for the last few months. We have, however, done some exploring nearby. On morning walks and around the house, I’ve seen deer, listened to the birds, and watched the flowers blooming.

I saw a bald eagle a few times but no real good pictures. The eagle is in this picture a little left of center.

I’ve also been watching a couple of families of geese grow up.

The families cross the road together with mom and dad watching out for them.

A nearby state forest made for an interesting visit. The forest doesn’t have any hiking trails. The roads are all dirt and sand. Many people travel the roads in 4-wheel vehicles. Our car didn’t love the holes in the roads or the dust. 

We don’t have a canoe or kayaks, but I’d love to take off from here and explore.

A visit to the nearby national cemetery was interesting too. I’m not going to show individual shots, but some of the headstone inscriptions were fascinating. I’m taking an online class on the purpose and meaning of life that asks what you want on your headstone as a way to see what is important to you. Most graves had things like “Proud veteran. Love life and family”. My favorite epitaph was "He liked to make spaghetti"!

As we left, we saw three guys placing a new grave stone. They had strings running along the other stones so they could place this one properly. I wondered how the lines were so perfect in both directions.

We’ve seen the Blue Angels when we were in Pensacola back in 2014. They did a fly-by in our area recently. We drove to a parking lot in their stated path and it was packed but people kept to their area so we were still social distancing.

It was a single pass, but very cool!