Critter Day

How about some recent critters in my world?

This is the flicker that has been hanging around the deck. He comes to the birdbath, walks on the deck floor and perches on this bar. I've never had a flicker come so close to the house before.

One of the days we were out doing trail work we found this clean painted turtle on the trail. It's quite a ways from any water. Seemed a little odd, but a nice find.

Another visitor that is usually closer to water. This is a female Common Whitetail dragonfly. She was posing on a rock in the rock garden. You can see a male in the link below.

And here's quite an oddity- a black cat calmly sauntering through the driveway. I have no idea where it lives. I haven't seen evidence of a feral cat in our broken outbuildings lately.

I worked in the morning and had a Zoom meeting in the afternoon. Managed a few minutes in the gardens, but don't expect a lot from me this week. I don't do heat well. Mostly I sipped cold drinks and read a book. Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter. I have a couple of jobs I can do in our basement where it is cooler.

See Critters at MatthaeiI

Stop 10- Nikki... and Bill

  This is stop number 10, and states 13 and 14. This will by my last unique state for this trip. I still have to go through Indiana and Michigan, but I also did them while outward bound. MI, IN, IL, IA, OK, MO, TX, LA, MS, AL, GA, TN, KY, OH

I'm with Nikki at Moondoggie Liveree. I met her two years ago tomorrow! (when she hosted me and my trailer- and Bill and Denali- on my hike) And look who else showed up. It's Bill! This feels like an amazing reunion.

I had something special in mind for my mid-drive-hike-break. The southern terminus of the Sheltowee Trace trail wasn't out of the way at all. I thought I was going to share some links from when Marie and I hiked a couple other pieces of it when we did our Red River Gorge trip. However, there were no blog posts from that hike. (A real shame, because it was gorgeous) Then I remembered that it was the trip from electronics 7734. My computer fried itself. In fact, that was the computer where I actually lost some of the contents of the hard drive. I think I posted some pics on Facebook from my phone, but then the phone also went belly up. Anyway... That trip had some GREAT hikes, and it was when I discovered this trail.

Sheltowee is the name the Shawnee gave to Daniel Boone. It means Big Turtle. The trail is now 319 miles long and runs through the Big South Fork National River Area, and Daniel Boone National Forest. The turtle on the marker is its logo.

This is a National Recreation Trail. NRTs may or may not be for foot travel. This one is. They do not have the same status as National Scenic or Historic Trails, but they are recognized at a federal level. The primary feature of today's hike was rock walls. Very cool rock walls.

This ran along the banks of the Clear Fork river. I did a loop that was uphill both ways. I'll explain that later. After the day and a half of rain, the river was running high. In some places it was calmer, but in other places the water was turbulent enough to form standing waves over rocks.

All that rain made every small creek run stong, and there were numerous waterfalls that probably don't even happen most of the year.

Here's how the trail was uphill in both directions. The river makes a complete horseshoe bend. I started at the middle of the bend and walked upstream on the west portion. Then the trail climbs the ridge between the two parts of the river. That was about 200 feet higher. Then the trail does go downhill to get to the eastern part of the river. On the way down it follows a little creek.

Once you reach the river again, you are now walking south, but the river is now flowing north because of that bend! So you are walking uphill again to get back to the parking area. Tricky, right? If I had gone the other direction, it would have been mostly downhill. Of course, this is all semantics since it's a loop. The net elevation change is zero, but it feels weird.

I was able to do a loop that included 2.3 miles of the Sheltowee Trace, and then 1.7 return miles on the Burnt Mill Bridge Trail to get back to the car. With the sections Marie and I did in Red River Gorge, I've hiked perhaps 10 miles of the Sheltowee. I might be able to figure it out from my records, but if I ever did hike this whole trail, I'd just do the segments again that we did in 2019 for the continuity. Junctions were well marked, and the trail has been well-constructed, not just thrown across the landscape.

Other highlights include seeing a little garter snake in January.

And, finding American climbing fern, Lygodium palmatum. I MAY have seen this one in the Red River Gorge, but I'll have to check back through the pictures. At any rate, I haven't seen it very often.

I entered Ohio at dusk on the Simon Kenton bridge. Not a great picture, but I thought the lights were cool.

And early this morning, I discovered I was driving a portion of the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail!

Just one more detail for the day. Owen did not want to be left out. He is Lin and Joe's cat, but he sort of thinks he's a dog.

The weather was wonderful. Warmest day of the trip yet. I hiked in shirtsleeves and it was 60 degrees. When I was with Nikki two years ago, we experienced what turned out to be the coldest temperatures of the entire NCT hike with one morning at -6 degrees!

Sheltowee Trace and Burnt Mill Loop Trail, Tennessee, 4.0 miles

See Rainy Day Fun

Playing Footsie

 
Since I hadn't been farther outside than to toss something in the compost while I was sick, I needed to go get the mail from the last couple of days. There was just enough snow on the driveway to make a wonderful place for tracks.

I haven't caught an opossum at the compost bucket lately, but they are obviously still around.



There are various cats that wander through. I don't know if one is living in the barn these days or not, but I saw a dark one in the yard earlier this week. Here, it crossed paths with the 'possum, going opposite directions.



The bunny rabbits aren't going to be left out. This one wasn't even jumping. Maybe it paused here for a minute.



And, no surprise, several deer had also wandered through. You can catch the sneaker track of this human too.



I feel much better today. Just a lot of coughing and hacking yet. Although, a walk to the mailbox was enough. I wouldn't have wanted to try 10 miles today.

In other news: I wrote in the morning and formatted like a fiend all afternoon. Good progress.

See Opossum Tracks Again

Sunday Sampler

 
This morning we bid goodbye to our hostess for the past two nights. Rebecca graciously allowed us to stay with her, and we hit it off well. Rebecca left, Marie right.



Then Marie and I went to church at St. Mary's in Ballston Spa, NY. Beautiful old church.

The interior is similar to St. Joseph's near home.



Then it was back to the mall. I sold a few more books. The best thing was a pet adoption event that was set up right next to me.

Sam the cat got to go to a forever home with Elizabeth.



There were cats and dogs. I don't think this little guy got to take the dog home, but he sure had a good time holding him.



Personally, I liked Odie, a blue heeler. If circumstances were a little different I would have considered adopting him. A really nice dog.



We have now moved to a new location with a friend of Marie's, and I'm whipped till tomorrow.

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Soft Little Footfalls

 
From time to time we get a stray cat living in one of our decrepit outbuildings. Lookin' very much like there's one around now, although I haven't spotted him/her yet. Cute little prints with no claws.



Took a road walk again today. Not much of interest to see, except that it was almost 6 pm when I got home and there was still light. That's nice.



In other news: I think I must have done my crash day yesterday instead of today. Yesterday morning at work was stressful, and I just couldn't get myself in gear between shifts. I was thinking maybe I'd lost my momentum on the Dubois Files books, because I wasn't liking Chapter 1 very much. But I spend as much time pondering as I do writing, and eventually came to realize that the problem was the chapter was too complex and would not entice kids to read farther. So, today I reworked it, and I'm liking the result a lot. This third book will have stronger appeal to kids who like academics and brainy puzzles more than the first two books. I want some of the series to do just that, but even so, they can't be way out of range. Anyway... problem solved, and I'm in the middle of chapter 3. Back to work!

	See Concept Cover: ABZ Affair
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Fun, Friends, Food

 
We just hung out today, ferried the girls to their activities, ate a lot of food and had fun.

Casper the cat is a new addition since my last visit. Quite a handsome fellow.



We played a game that was new to me called Forbidden Island. It was only the fourth time they had played it. Instead of a competitive game, it's collaborative. You have to work together as a team to collect certain items from the island and then all airlift away before the island sinks under rising floodwaters. They had never won it before, but had learned a lot of strategy ideas from the previous attempts. We managed to win, with much cheering and high-fives.



Then we had dessert. Of course I forgot to picture it, because then all we were interested in was eating it! We had brownies with ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and raspberries. We did a great job at making empty bowls.



We also decided that Monday will be flower show day, so tomorrow will be more family/friend fun.

	See Arriving in Philadelphia
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Farm Fun

 
A few more pictures from yesterday. Horses are generally curious about a new human.





But the cow was the most fun. It was clearly a pet, and trotted right over to me and demanded to have its nose scratched.



The funniest thing of all was the white German shepherd. He was friendly, and kept coming to me for attention, but in between he was playing with a full-grown black cat. The cat seemed less enthused than the dog, but didn't get testy. As I was leaving the dog picked up the cat by the scruff of the neck and carried it away from my car, toward the barn. Still playing? or being protective?

	See Salt and Pepper
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Whose Kitty Am I?

 
Do you recognize me? How did this blogger get pictures of me?



You are very purr-spicacious if you know my name.



Maybe the blogger will answer those questions tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'll just sit here and be purr-fect. And I'll bet you didn't know I can use words like purr-spicacious.

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V-8 Kitty, 1990-2009

Today, with mixed feelings, we said goodbye to our V-8 Kitty. She was 19 years old and really in poor condition. Up until the last week she did not seem to be in any particular distress, but has gone quickly downhill.

She came to us as a stray in 1990, a year that was particularly difficult in our lives. We've never been cat people, but the very tiny kitten took a shine to Om, and so she quickly became his. In 1992 I went off to grad school for a few years, so V-8 and Om had lots of time together.

She was a funny kitten; her favorite place to sleep that first summer was in a small sink. However, the picture of her in the sink may be lost for good.

She has been slowly losing her mind for the past few years. For a while, she returned to her childhood love- sleeping in a sink. This time it was the kitchen sink, which wasn't too handy, but since she changed favorite locations fairly often we just lived with it.

She was never an affectionate cat. She was a great mouser, and very loyal and territorial, chasing much larger cats off our property. She was actually a fairly small cat. She did not like to be picked up, and did not come to seek out a warm lap to sleep in.

However, in the past couple of years she actually changed, and became a cat who sometimes liked to snuggle. Here is the last decent picture of her with Om. She came to him and wanted to sleep in his lap. You can see how he felt about that!



Her passing is certainly not unexpected, and she's much better off. She crawled as close as she could get to her favorite hiding place and died sometime between 3 am and 9 am. In some ways it is hard to be sad. Yet, in other ways, it's really the final end of an era. Our lives changed forever in 1990, and V-8 was very much a part of all of those swift changes. It's like she was the last thread of connection to all the events of that year. Too early to be able to process all of this. Hubby is sad... it's the first animal that he ever felt was his.

And I can't find the picture of V-8's memorial rock either.

Rest in peace, little kitty.

See Looking for Love
See Where Does an 18-Year-Old Kitty Sleep