So let’s see….I was a miserable failure according to the little birds over on the nature trails, so I decided to go out to the boardwalk to see what if anything was going on at the heron rookery.
The sky was clouding over when I got out to the boardwalk.
Every year I try to get out there frequently in the spring to watch the littles grow up. But I never get there enough, and this year I missed all of it.
Perhaps an adult resting after lunch duty.
Cause the littles weren’t so little anymore!
Are the nests empty?
It was about mid-day and most of the feeding activity had apparently already happened. There wasn’t much in the way of adults flying around.
Nope, not empty. They’re just deep and still hold hungry little ones.
But there was still enough activity to initiate a few anxious moments as the teenagers determined if the adult flying in was their adult.
Guess that wasn’t our order, guys.
Disappointment ran rampant.
This nest held four hopeful teenagers. They were keeping an eye out for mom or dad.
I enjoyed watching this mama (or daddy?) heron working on their nest.
Cleaning up the household.
After she got it the way she wanted it she rested a moment, shook her feathers and then sat back down.
Newborns are just so much work!
I think it’s a little late for eggs to still be there but maybe she has some late arrival babies in there.
I hope my partner shows up soon to spell me for awhile.
Mostly the adults just seemed tired of all the noise and chaos.
I swear, these kids need to grow up and take some responsibility for getting their own meals.
I wasn’t getting anything all that exciting when a group of kids showed up and I figured it was time to go.
Everybody’s having a good time, but they were noisier than the birds.
But then I took a few more pictures of stuff…
Hey! Where is everybody?
and as I was doing that I saw this swan flying toward me.
Incoming…
Directly at me, actually,
Really…..INCOMING!!
Until he (or she) was right there in front of me and then overhead. It was amazing and resulted in my favorite shots of the day.
Duck!!!
Things like being in the flight path of a swan make me want to go out there every day. I was definitely smiling as I headed for the car.
Not duck!!! SWAN!!!! (You see what I did there…)
And I smiled some more when I stopped at a little picnic area on my way out of the park. But that will have to wait.
Penny here. Geeze people, here I am having all sorts of adventures and mom and my aunt take off camping for a couple days and get to post about it for years. Ok. For days.
This is my studious look. I think it works.
But my point is, do I get to post? No I do not. I have not been given access. Until now, when mom finally gave into my pressure. I told her I won’t sleep in her stinking tent until she posts about all the fun stuff I’ve already done this month!
We went to Katie’s park for our annual photo shoot.
I know my friends have been wondering what I’ve been up to and let me tell you I’ve been really busy! And most of what I’ve been into isn’t going to get me into trouble either! Win-win!
Mom likes a good head tilt, and I try to oblige.
First off, as most of you know, my sister Angel Katie always had a spring yellow flower photo shoot with mom. Well, she told me all about it and I demanded equal yellow flower opportunity. I’m pretty sure it’s in my contract with my folks. So mom took me over to Katie’s park one day early this month.
Mom says I did really good. I thought it took way too long.
Are we almost done, mom?
Then when my Aunt Beth was here we stopped near some other yellow flowers and mom grabbed a few pictures. By then I was an expert at being a model, so it didn’t take long at all.
I think the sun was in my eyes that day.
My Aunt Beth and mom and I also went on quite a few walks in different parks. We all had the best time with beautiful blue skies and hardly any bugs!
Aren’t I cute?
I got to show Aunt Beth several of my own personal parks and especially how well I can sit for the camera. As long as there were treats available, of course.
I look kind of small, don’t I.
She was very impressed.
And THEN, the most exciting thing! I got to go on a walk with my Aunt Beth and my Mama S and my mom and even my doggy mom Vivian and her roommate Oliva!
Mom asked them to walk up this trail to set us up for a photo.
It was amazing! Three shelties all going for a walk together. I tell you what, we caused lots of heads to turn when we all walked by!
It wasn’t easy to get the three of us lined up.
OK, so sometimes I was a little rambunctious, and Mama S had to tell me to straighten up. After all, I’m still a baby…right? Oh…what….no? Not so much?
Sometimes a girl’s just got to leap for joy.
Well, I guess I’ll start acting more adult tomorrow, but that day I had so much fun! I got to share one of my favorite parks with my three moms and my aunt!
Yep we had a great time walking together.
I’m so grateful that Mama S brought her girls along on this walk! I promised her we’d do it again soon!
That’s my mom, Vivian next to me (I’m in the center) and her bestie Olivia on the right.
And then, still in the month of May, I got to go on a play day with my friend Lance! I can’t even begin to figure out how mom and dad managed to get this much fun stuffed into one month!
So what does a person do while camping at Harrisville State Park once the main mission has been accomplished?
It was a dark and stormy day.
Well. If we’d had another clear night I’d have been out there on the beach getting a second good look at the Milky Way. But we weren’t that fortunate.
We went to the marina on Tuesday to look at the boats. There weren’t many there.
Monday, as we were setting up camp under blue skies, a park employee told us that Tuesday would be rainy but Wednesday was going to be nice. We figured we’d get through Tuesday and find something fun to do on Wednesday.
Tuesday looked like this most of the day.
We figured wrong.
During the day Tuesday we kept expecting it to rain, but it was just breezy and cold. The rain held off, but we expected it at any time. It was really too cold to enjoy walking on the beach.
Layers helped. Sort of.
We went to the local library to stay warm as we tried to find something to do. I googled “What is there to do in Harrisville Michigan?” Google came back with 5 things.
The clouds were cool, though.
1. Sturgeon point lighthouse. Been there, it wasn’t open but we got an amazing image.
2. Harrisville State Park. That’s where we were staying.
3. Cedarbrook Trout Farm. Well, I guess that was a possibility.
4. Bailey School. Saw it through the window, it wasn’t open.
5. Sturgeon Point State Park. Well, that’s where the lighthouse is…so…..
We spent a couple hours at the library, reading magazines and hanging out. When we headed back to camp to make dinner it began to rain.
You can always count on a library to fill a couple of hours.
So we each grabbed some snacks and our reading material and ducked into our tents.
Peanut butter on crackers…perfect snack food.
Fourteen hours later it finally stopped raining. Though I like listening to waves while I sleep I really didn’t need to listen to them for that many hours in a row.
The view from my bed.
And the kicker was that Wednesday wasn’t really any better than Tuesday had been. Windy and cold. We decided to go to the local diner for breakfast.
A warm breakfast always helps to make the day brighter.
There we asked the waitress what there was to do in Harrisville, and she mentioned a couple of stores. One was an art gallery that we had planned on visiting, another was a resale shop with supposedly cool stuff just waiting to be picked over.
Not open for the season yet.
We had hope.
We skipped, reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz, down the city sidewalks. We were still cold.
But it turns out neither place was open because we were up there before Memorial Day, the official start to summer. Sigh.
We walked around the nearly empty town and then drove back to the library where I skimmed a book and she read another magazine.
A library can warm you up.
And then we decided to pack it in and go home.
Time to go, even though it wasn’t technically time to go.
We’d only made one meal at camp. We’d spent way more hours in our tents than we’d planned. It was cold and wet.
We’d accomplished my goal so we could call the trip a success, and sleeping in a real bed in a warm house looked pretty good. It only took us an hour to throw everything in the car and head home.
Sometimes you have to admit that Mother Nature won.
Of course halfway home we stopped at a roadside park and the sun came out. But that was OK, we felt good about our decision to bail on our last night at camp.
The sun came out on our way home.Made us smile.
After all, there’s always another adventure waiting in the wings. I could tell you what and where, but that would spoil the story.
Six months ago I reserved a campsite on the shores of Lake Huron during a new moon cycle, intent on doing some Milky Way photography. Many years ago Katie and I camped at this state park and I remembered a lighthouse located just a few miles north that might work for night photography.
This is the Sturgeon Point Lighthouse.
My sister drove all the way up from Alabama just to go with me on this photography adventure. Last Monday we set out early in the day so that we had time to scout out the lighthouse location for potential night shots.
My sister noticed this split in color on the lake.
You see, the weather didn’t look promising beyond Monday night. That’s what happens when you have to book something months out. Weather is always the unknown element. We expected a clear night Monday, but rain and cold Tuesday and Wednesday.
We discussed going back home Tuesday if it was miserable.
Monday was a beautiful day.
And we knew we’d only have one night to get the Milky Way. So we needed to be ready.
The lighthouse was just as I remembered it, standing tall on the shores of the Great Lake. We wandered the beach looking for something interesting to put in the foreground.
The bench might look fun under the Milky Way.
Eventually we decided we needed to be quite a bit behind the lighthouse in order to be shooting Southeast where the Milky Way would be. We found a place that might work, tucked low behind a small dune, and made a big X in the sand so we could find the spot in the darkness of 2 a.m., our planned shoot time.
Probably not this angle though.
Then we explored other places on the site, including Baily School which wasn’t open, but we got an interesting shot through the window anyway.
A school room from back in the day.
We wandered down the beach to the south, thinking maybe the rocks out in the water might be interesting. Even if we didn’t end up shooting there at night, they made a nice, minimal, image in the sunshine we were enjoying.
Maybe we could light paint this rock.
Eventually it was time to go check into the campground. If all three days were as nice as Monday we’d have a wonderful time. If only.
Our campsite, right on the shore, was small, but we managed to make it work.
Maybe the weather forecasts were wrong.
We did note that of the handful of people camping along the shore we were the only ones in tents. Perhaps we were a touch too early in the camping season.
The view from our camp site looked promising.
Not to worry, we each had electric blankets and we were confident that we’d be fine. This was not our first spring camping experience.
Our beach. Though it was too cold to swim.
So…you might ask…what happened on Monday night? Did we leave our nice warm, snuggly beds to drive up to the lighthouse at 2 in the morning? Or did the waves lapping on the shore lull us back to sleep after our alarms rang?
Mom says we haven’t had internet for a million years. Ok, maybe it only FELT like a million years, maybe it was just about a week.
Mom told me to sit on this bench. So I did.
Anyway I’ve been to lots and lots of parks lately ’cause mom and dad are getting stuff done on the house and I tend to bark a lot while stuff is being done on the house.
But mom! I’m not sure about sitting next to a BOY!
Plus mom says it’s really nice to have the time to go to parks and work on my behavior issues. Seriously mom? Does it look like I have behavior issues?
Deuce seemed to tolerate my curiosity, but I don’t think he was thrilled to sit next to a GIRL either.
I didn’t think so.
Mom says she has some really nice pictures of me that she will share with you once she gets them edited and stuff. Which could be a million years from now.
Or a about a week.
Pictures in this post were taken by my Aunt Karen, Deuce’s mom.
Hard telling with mom.
Signing off for now, your photography model and exemplary citizen,
A couple weeks ago I introduced a friend to the bird magic that is Kensington. You saw the angst with the red headed woodpecker, but there were other bird shenanigans that morning. For instance there was this grackle dad and teenager who seemed not to agree about something very important.
“Hey dad, can I have the keys to the car tonight?““No! Your legs aren’t even long enough to reach the pedals!““I never get to do ANYTHING!““And don’t ask me again!”
Soon dad will be busy with a new brood and teenager will get more freedom. But until then, from the looks of jr’s face, there are more ‘discussions’ in the wind.
Change Is Hard 