A tree that had been drilled full of holes (by a woodpecker?).
A tree that had been drilled full of holes (by a woodpecker?).
And now...The Larch
Food? There's a lot of interesting plants in the woods, but we didn't think anyone would be interested in seeing pictures of them. We snapped these because we wanted to look them up and see if they were edible. There are, in fact, a lot of wild edible plants around. On my old property, raspberries grew naturally, and at Smith's Cottages there were blackberry bushes, much to the delight of our cottage-neighbors, who brought just about every blackberry at the place home with them in their tupperware containers. (greedy bastards. the only thing stopping them from stripping the bushes completely was they ran out of tupperware. as if there weren't going to be any other people renting these cottages. sheesh.)
I wanted to take home some fern saplings and cultivate a new Age of Ferns, which would inevitably bring back the dinosaurs, but priscilla wouldn't let me.
The trail starts to get steeper near the top.
The nerd in his natural habitat.
Nearing the summit. Priscilla took this picture because, above the conifer line, there was a nice contrast of reds and greens, but my ineptitude with the camera settings kinda ruined what she was attempting to capture. On the right is a correction shot from friday. You didn't need another picture of me in it.
As mentioned before, the pictures really don't do the reality justice. Looking at these pictures, you can barely see the contrasting colors in the plants so to everyone except rod and me, this is just another picture of a tree. ho hum
At the top. The view of the lake below and surrounding mountains and forest isn't done justice by the pictures. Baldface Mountain is the best trail in the region because it's a short hike and the view amazing and not obscured by trees.
With her hat and stick and backpack, priscilla looks like she belongs in these woods. I look like a vagrant stoner in need of a haircut. But i always look like that.
I apologize for all the slouching i'm doing in all of these pictures.