Yours, LORD, is the
greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for
everything in heaven and earth is Yours.
Yours, LORD, is the kingdom; You are exalted as head over all. ~ I Chronicles 29:11
What a difference
a day makes!
We woke to bright
sunshine, and it lasted all day! And
although it began a bit chilly, by mid-afternoon we just shy of 60
degrees.
Blaine was able to secure a better picture of those monstrous beasts last evening. : )
Mid-morning, we
deemed it was time to get the bikes out and go bear hunting!
We rode around a bit, just checking things out.
This is the tubing launch area.There are numerous homes along this river – but only on one side.So, if you want to tube, they drive you to this asphalt path, then you have to carry your giant tube down the path to this long boardwalk, and then on to the launch area. It’s quite a haul!
On I followed, as Blaine took me to this highly unusual piece of equipment he discovered.
Rolling to a stop at one of Blaine’s discoveries from the other day.What in the world is that??It’s a hog pen!
Now there’s something we’ve never seen before!
Doesn’t look like it’s been used for a while though.
Then Blaine took me to the spot where he saw the bear the other day. Of course, there was no bear today. But I decided we should go into the woods and see if we could find scat. I wanted proof! 😊
It was easy to
walk around. There seemed to be pathways
through the underbrush. We saw evidence
of digging and then we found scat, but it just didn’t seem quite right. Yes, of course we took pictures! It was proof of something!
Back where we
left our bikes, we walked down an overgrown wide trail and heard
squealing! We looked left, and there was
a wild hog! And then, seconds later,
another one and about a half dozen babies!
And then another with babies! All
told, we saw 3-4 adults and at least a dozen babies! They’re all pretty skiddish though, so the
pictures aren’t great.
And we determined that Blaine was wrong. What he saw the other day was not a bear, but a hog. Poor guy. He’s not wrong very often. But looking at the pictures we have of the hogs, I can certainly see how he came up with the mistaken identity. And who would ever think you’d see a hog in the woods? So that was fun!
And now I understand why Blaine would think this was a bear.
Especially when you’re not expecting to see a pig. : )
And by the way – – that was hog scat we found.
Believe it or not, you can Google pictures!There’s a baby there too.I’m so sorry the pictures didn’t come out better! : ( It was all very exciting!And there it is. Hog scat. Just in case you ever encounter it on your walks in the woods . . . I know. Gross, huh?Guess we reached the end of the trail . . .
Time to head home.
We went home, ate
some lunch and blew up the boat.
It was time to
check out the Rainbow River and Head Springs a little closer.
I did that!
When we dropped the boat off, I took the Jeep back to park, while Blaine finished getting the boat ready.
Just look how well I backed it in! I was very proud of myself! : )And now we on the water!
What a gorgeous
day it was! And how different this river
is from Silver Springs! There’s not the abundance
of wildlife here, but there are river-side homes, and the water is incredibly
clear. So clear, that in places, we
could easily see the bottom, even though it’s 30-40’ deep. And a couple of times we were able to watch
turtles swimming. And a few fish, though
not as many of those as you’d think.
There’ll be plenty more beautiful abstract art-type pictures again today.
For our eyes though, it was completely clear!
And stunning!There’s more river on the other side of the grass.
We just chose to cruise by the homes. : )There’s our old friends – the cormorant and the turtles on a log! haha!That’s the Rainbow Springs Visitor Center we were at the other day.
We could hear the waterfalls running off to the side of us.The roped off area is the swimming/snorkel area.
I was all excited to get in the water to snorkel – despite the cold – but after seeing it close up, decided it wouldn’t really be worth it.
The interesting sights are outside the rope. : (Look how clearly you can see our shadows!Stunning!
It was like looking at jewels scattered along the river bed!That fallen tree is quite a ways under the water!Why didn’t we think of that?
Putting our dog in our kayak with us? (crazy dog owners . . .)There’s a turtle in this picture. Can you spot it?I have to point this out because otherwise, you’d never know what this is.
The top arrow is a turtle (which we could plainly see from our kayak), the bottom arrow is his shadow!
There he is!
We were able to track him for a bit, until he finally noticed us and took off.
Turtles in the water are pretty fast when they want to be!This was Blaine’s favorite house.There’s a story with this one.
Years ago, in our ABF (Sunday School) class at The Chapel, someone started this jest where a very heavy, stone fisherman statue roamed around from home to home. When it showed up at your house, you then picked the next person and secreted it to their home. On Sunday, people talked about who had it and where it was placed.
It was all quite fun, even though the way I tell it doesn’t sound like it. : )Remember how brown the grass at Silver Springs was?
This was nothing like that!
I wanted to share the wavy grass! Relaxing to watch!
Today was a beautiful day, in every way! Thanks be to God!
