saturday in the woods

Saturday started a little late since I didn't want to get out of bed in the morning but after slicing up some veggies--celery, carrots, bell pepper and onions--and braising some stew beef I tossed them into my crockpot and then headed out to do some easy hiking in Duke Forest.

This picture here is a good illustration of the pithy comment "that's just water under the dam" 'cause you can see the water doing just that. Going under the dam right beneath my feet. As you can probably guess, this isn't a very big structure but it still holds back a fair amount of water.

The picture below is a half mile or so downstream of the dam. Today was an amazingly pretty day to be out in the woods in this area--as you can tell in that picture. It was windy out in the open but just breezy in the woods and the temperature was around 62f with a lot of sun. Lovely. The Fall colors are muted but they were never all that strong this year. In the NC mountains they had a good display, but not here. But there's enough color to really make for a lovely hike.
And after the hike I went to Wal-mart to pick up a few things, then back to my house to eat that stew. Yum. The house smelled soooo good when I walked back in.

Comments

carmilevy said…
I can almost feel the glassiness of the water. What a peaceful place to be!

I couldn't get outside today because of all the wind and the rain. So I cooked up some indoor photo fun instead.
1:27 AM
Catherine said…
Very nice - I hiked up to the top of a hill today, but it was farmland all the way, barely a tree in sight.
Michele sent me
4:57 AM
srp said…
Hello.
I think your wooded stream is gorgeous and you have much more color than we have here on the coast. I had to drive NW to Williamsburg to get much color at all. I think this is a different type of fall. A few of the trees turned with the first cold spell and this wind has helped them shed their leaves. Now the others will probably turn. So, instead of overall grand flaming color at the same time we're getting this two pronged Autumn. Not the best for pictures, but it has ushered in a bit cooler weather than usually seen in October.

That stew sounds marvelous!
7:27 AM
Anonymous said…
Crockpot's like having a home staff. :)

Dam. Gorgeous photos.
1:21 PM
tiff said…
Isn't it cool that even in the Triangle there are these pretty peaceful places to be? I'm consistently amazed. I'll have to get out to Duke Forest someday - look lovely.
3:43 PM
srp said…
Here from Michele.

Is it "water under the dam" or "water under the bridge"? I was trying to picture exactly what it looked like from another angle.

It is getting dark.... oh, no! I really hate Standard Time although that extra hour was fine last night.
5:07 PM
Panthergirl said…
How beautiful!! How can you go from a scene like that to Walmart?? Seems like going from heaven to hell! ;)

Nice pics, Dave!

Here via michele.
5:25 PM
Carli N. Wendell said…
It'd be cool to have a stream. I have the Hudson River, but it is not the same thing by a long shot. Michele sent me.
11:57 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nitroflex at home

Image
I mentioned a few days ago that I'd purchased off of Craig's List an exercise machine. A Nitroflex, to be more specific, for the grand sum of $75. The boxes you see to the left were bought by the seller as discontinued merchandise over a year ago and stored in his back yard storage shed. You might be able to see some of the bugs and such that had made their homes on these boxes. I left them out on my deck for a few days before opening them to allow the insects to leave gracefully or die in the sun. The picture to the left is the pieces from the box, unboxed, and up in one of my upstairs bedrooms. For the most part it wasn't difficult to move it around though two pieces were heavy and a number of them were kinda long and bulky to be wandering about the house with. Surprisingly, this kit didn't require any extra tools. There were two allen keys and one combo wrench included in the boxes and that was all it took to put it together. The whole thing only took about half an h...
Read more

ankle update

S ince a few people object to seeing my feet --poor misdirected souls--I have the two pictures below hidden behind links. Behold them at your own risk! *evil laugh* Actually they're not scary though the first one is a little colorful. T he first picture shows my ankle and foot from the side, as labeled. You can see a lot of general edema of the entire foot. There's also a good bit of discoloration of the ankle area and to a lesser degree the top of the foot all the way down to the toes. The side view is a lot worse in this regard than the top view. T he second picture shows the two feet from the top so you can compare the somewhat normal looking right foot to the injured left foot. There's not much abnormal color on this view but you can see the "sausage like" swelling of the left foot. It's this swelling that is causing my main problem--I can't get the foot into my boots and I need the boots to support the ankle. Damn Catch-22. Side view, looking inward ...
Read more

Ostrich poop found here

Image
I took these pictures last Fall while visiting the NC Zoo. On the left you can see what appears to be a nice polite ostrich just wandering around. This impression soon turns out to be false when her dowdy tail feathers raise up and reveal a puckered anus. Ewwww! If you look carefully, you can see that she's made a deposit on the ground. More ewwww! Feel free to click on the image to make them bigger. Details can make all the difference in these shots. In other matters, aren't those really bony legs they have? And couldn't they have a little more color?
Read more