A Day of Rest

Northwoods Journal
Sunday, July 5, 2015

No place to go today, so we had a very nice, relaxing day. And, the birds began showing up at the bird feeders today! So, I have several photos to share.

Mark fired up his Coleman stove and fried bacon for breakfast while I made French toast with some thick Texas toast bread. I even made some homemade blueberry “syrup” with fresh blueberries from our bushes back home. (The wild blueberries look terrible this summer, so no picking up here.) We ate out on the porch and enjoyed the birds.

There were goldfinches this morning.

American goldfinch.

American goldfinch.

And this northern flicker found some ants in the fire pit. He first landed on the right side of the fire ring – unfortunately my photo of that was blurry – then he jumped down in the fire pit. I managed to get a shot of him peeking out from the pit.

Northern flicker in the fire pit.

Then he hopped back up on the other side.

Northern flicker looked for ants.

Eventually we got around to go for a nice hike. Mark wanted to go back to the area we hiked yesterday because we had seen where the High Country Pathway crossed the trail we were on, so he wanted to go back and hike some of that. We parked near the fallen log where we rested the dogs yesterday.

Hiking the Pathway is a little bit of a challenge with three dogs. It’s much easier to walk them on ATV trails that are wide. The High Country Pathway is a pretty narrow trail in most places we’ve hiked. I was keeping my eyes open for interesting landscape or macro things to photograph, but Mark wasn’t much in the mood for stopping for me to play photographer. He will tell you that he’s very supportive of my hobby, but at times his support has limits and they can be fairly short. I did manage to try a macro of this moth on a fern. The moth was much whiter that it appears in this photo.

White moth on fern.

It was quite hot and humid so we didn’t take the Pathway too far. When we got back to the fallen log, we stopped to water the dogs who had worked up quite a thirst in the heat.

Three beagles, one bowl.

Darling Daisy.

We decided to explore a bit more of the trails in this area and so drove a short way and found another interesting place to hike. The trail took us into this huge rye field where there were some pretty views.

Huge rye field with pretty view.

The dogs were forced to take another rest in the heat.

Beagles taking a rest in the shade.

Later Mark would look up this area on the satellite map and there are plenty more trails to hike through here, so we will definitely be coming back again. It was a really pretty and quiet area.

Back at the cabin, we ate our lunch on the porch and enjoyed the quiet. I love the day after a big holiday weekend, when everyone else goes home and the peace returns to the north woods! I spent some time reading more of my Better Photo Basics book, playing with my camera, and taking photos of the birds.

There were white-breasted nuthatches.

White-breasted nuthatch.

And more goldfinches.

American goldfinch.

The downy woodpecker made an appearance.

Downy woodpecker.

And the yellow-bellied sapsucker. We’ve been seeing quite a few yellow-bellies this time, but not at the feeders.

Yellow-bellied sapsucker, the rock star of the bird world.

Then I noticed two small brown birds in the trees. It turned out they were two female rose-breasted grosbeaks. They were fairly small and stayed together, so I think they were sisters from the same nest that had recently fledged. They were very timid.

Young rose-breasted grosbeak approaches the feeders.

Young rose-breasted grosbeak (f) at the feeder.

Later in the afternoon we went for another hike. I asked Mark if we could go over to Lookout Ridge and hike the western ridge where there is a really pretty view. It’s a bit of an uphill climb to start but once you get to the top of the ridge it’s a really nice hike and the view on the western edge just can’t be beat. You could almost believe you are in the mountains!

One of my favorite views.

You can see a bit of a haze in this photo and the landscape photo from our earlier hike. Later we would learn that the heavy haze was caused by forest fires in Canada. It would be even worse the next day.

It only takes about a half-hour to climb the hill, walk across the ridge and come down the other side and then back around to the field where we parked. Considering it was still very hot, a half-hour was just enough.

Making our way back to where we parked.

Mark made a fire and made some BBQ chops on his tri-pod grill. We ate outside on the porch for all three meals!! It’s kind of funny because we have a nice patio at home and rarely eat outside in the summer, but when we are here we rarely eat inside!

We were both very sweaty from the heat so washed up early and had a quiet evening. Friends of ours surprised us by driving up the driveway in their Mule. We had a nice visit, which was the perfect ending to our restful day!

(Be sure to check out my next post where I share an exciting encounter we had on the Sunrise Side!)

P.S. I don’t know what is going on with WordPress, but I am having problems with formatting my posts.  I get them all set up and then when I look at the preview there are big gaps and spaces between photos that I did not put there, and the fonts are changed in the captions.  So, I apologize if anything looks bad!