First Try at Pics (without Sarah)

Here's Jake and me at our snowshoeing adventure at the Genesee County Park. It was a really fun time. A manager from Eastern Mountain Sports brought snowshoes to rent, and together with a park employee presented a history of snowshoes to the 12 or so of us registered for the second of two hiking sessions. It began in the Interpretive Center at the park, which I was surprised to find contains lifelike dioramas of local wildlife, displays of local flora and fauna and ways of identifying them, and a hands on "Discovery Room" for kids. I was impressed with the professionalism of it, and the dedication of the park employees and volunteers (called Acorns)

Here's a link http://www.co.genesee.ny.us/dpt/parks/interpretivenaturecenter.html

I definitely have to make sure I take a camera on walks around the lake. Today (sans camera) Zeke and I disturbed 6 or 7 really large birds high in the tree canopy in the woods at the far south end of the lake. They were maybe turkeys or pheasants (no glasses with me either). I guess I'm surprised that either of those birds would be found as high in the trees as these were, and when they flew off it looked really unnatural - the same way a helicopter looks as though it should not be able to escape gravity and fly.

That's all...now I'm going to try and get my picture here.

Salmon Run

We went to a "Salmon Run" Boy Scout field trip last Sunday. Basically it was a strange mix of people fishing at a dam , which was the end of an upstream run for the salmon that were unfortunate enough to swim upstream in that direction. Seems almost like those "hunts" where animals are corralled (sp?) and safari type guys 'hunt' them for sport. Except there were a few people who seemed to be fishing forf their lives...they catch a bunch of salmon and leash them to hooks in the concrete walls around the entry to the dam. They are very serious and oblivious to a den of boy scouts watching them. Other fisherman seem to attend for the social and competitive aspect of the "run", taunting other firsherman and talking smack about how they don't care about the game warden, etc. There was one cut black kid fishing who just seemed to be in a world all his own. I have no idea if he was hoping to sell fish, eat fish, or if he just had the inexplicable fishing bug (like my son-in-law Derek's bass fishing weekend) It was a bizarre ritual that should be studied by sociologists. And that's all I have to say about that.