Camping

It's been warm, but I have managed to go camping anyway.  I much prefer cool nights where you actually need a sleeping bag, but just getting away from everyday normal is worth it.  North Carolina was our destination this time.  Here is a scene from the Blue Ridge Parkway:

I like just driving along the Parkway, and of couse stopping at every overlook, whether you can see anything or not.  I have yet to drive along the section that starts in Cherokee, near the Great Smokies.  I hope to make that journey this year, but once summer ends, schedules become pretty tight on the weekends.

While camping along the Parkway, we were lucky enough to have a Park Ranger host a program about skunks.  I really got into the program... as you can see below...

I learned that peroxide and soap will neutralize skunk odor in about a week.  I also learned that these guys will eat just about anything and are absolutely not afraid of anything.  Interesting and fun little creature!

On this same camping trip we made it to Mount Mitchell.  I will leave you with a photo from the summit.

Flown the coop

It is summer time and I have found myself too busy to take the time and write to the blog.  I really do not know how some people write daily, or even several times a day.  Summer means hiking, biking, camping, and canoeing.  I sit behind a computer enough at work as it is.

Time to catch up.  I never finished posting about the owls that nested in our back yard.  About a week or two after the first post, they flew from the nest.  Here is a picture of one of the babies on its first night out.

He was in a tree about 4 feet of the ground.  I walked up to it and stared him right in the eye while he stood stone still.  For the next few days, they lived in the woods just on the edge of my yard.  I learned to call like the mother owl and the babies always called back to me.  It made it easy to locate them.  Here is a picture of them sleeping during the day, about 20 feet up in the trees.

The baby is hiding behind the large branch.  The mother had three babies, of which two survived.  I found the one who didn't make it and could not find any thing broken about it.  I can only assume it fell from the nest and was injured internally.

We enjoyed watching them eat and hoot at night and I hope that we'll see them again next spring.