Every Day is a Gift!
This month I will be participating in the WordPress Photography 101 course. I hope to post a picture a day as part of this course.
This is my post for today’s assignment: The Natural World.
Coastal Georgia is home to many wetlands birds. Herons, Egrets, Wood Storks and Ibis are regularly seen in and around the salt marsh, creeks and rivers here.
One July afternoon this summer I was surprised to see a large pink bird flying over the marsh. It was too far away and flew by too fast for me to to tell for sure but I thought it must be a Roseate Spoonbill. Spoonbills nest along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana and in south Florida but they are considered uncommon this far north.
A neighbor confirmed that yes, I did see a Spoonbill. In fact, she saw a pair feeding in the creek at low tide. I continued to see the brilliant pink of the pair as they flew by our house almost every afternoon for about 3 weeks. One day I finally saw where one landed so I grabbed my camera and ran out to capture a few pictures.
Other Roseate Spoonbills have been spotted in other coastal Georgia locations in recent years. I know from now on I will always be on the lookout for pink birds among the flocks of Herons and Egrets I see in the salt marsh.
Has it really been eight years since we bought our RV and took off on our first adventure across our beautiful country?
We purchased our Titanium fifth wheel on June 29, 2006 and spent a couple of nights in the dealer’s lot to get familiar with our new home on wheels. After returning home to Georgia it took about two weeks to pack and get ready for our maiden voyage. With no reservations and no set itinerary we set out on our two month adventure across America and into the Canadian Rockies.
Here are a few highlights of that first amazing journey:
We were hooked! We knew this was the first of many amazing trips to come.
Not all of our wandering is to far away places like Alaska or the Yukon. Sometimes we wander close to home. On Monday, we hitched up the Titanium for a road trip to Auburn, Alabama to watch the south’s oldest football rivalry between Georgia and Auburn this coming Saturday. We decided to take a few extra days and explore a new to us Corps of Engineers park on West Point Lake in West Point, Georgia just off of I-85 near the Georgia/Alabama line. It’s great traveling during the week during the off season. We are almost the only ones here.
We spent three relaxing nights in site 113 in the campground with no other campers in our loop. The trees were wearing their fall colors and the sunsets were spectacular.
Our only neighbors were the geese.
R Schaefer Heard Campground on West Point Lake is one of three Corps of Engineers campgrounds on the lake. Our site is about 40 feet from the lake and like most COE parks we have a large site with plenty of room between our site and the ones on either side. Our site is a paved, back in site with water and electric hookups, a tent pad, fire ring, picnic table and a beautiful lake view. For more information about the park or to make reservations you can go the Recreation.gov site for R Schaefer Heard
Day 82: Monday, August 5, 2013
Our original plan was to spend 3 nights in Valdez and then start heading back home. We liked it here so much we ended up spending 5 nights.
We couldn’t pass up our last chance for fish and chips so we had lunch at Old Town Burgers. My halibut and chips were delicious and Henry enjoyed his fish tacos.
We met a great group of folks on the boat yesterday who told us there was a mama bear with four cubs on the way to the fish hatchery. Of course we couldn’t pass up an opportunity to see a bear so we took a drive back to the hatchery. We took Blondie down to the water and she wasn’t sure what to make of the fish.
As we drove back from the hatchery Henry spotted a black bear on our side of the road. We pulled over to the side of the road and watched the cub follow his mama back into the woods. With her cub safe and sound mama made several trips to retrieve dead fish from the creek bank to take back to the cubs. While this was all going on a Bald Eagle was preening on the top of one of the trees. After watching the bears for a long time we got ready to leave and saw a golden eagle fly overhead.
It was a great day to end our stay in Valdez. We will now begin our journey back home with one more night in Alaska before entering Canada to head south.
Wandering Dawgs 