A stroll in the park.

No, hardly a stroll, I fear. This was three hours of climbing straight uphill, then heading straight downhill, only to head straight uphill again. It was good exercise, and I enjoyed myself immensely, but sheesh, haven’t those guys ever heard of “switchbacks”?????

The Professor and I spent the day at Susquehannock State Park, which is in southcentral Pennsylvania. It was the perfect day for it. The temperatures stayed in the low seventies, it’s still early enough to be bug free on the trails, and spring wildflower season is peaking. I took scads of pictures (yes, I will inflict some on you, gentle and patient reader). Pity the Prof though. He discovered on the trail that his camera’s shutter was not operating according to specs. Every picture he tried to take was over-exposed. Later today we’re heading over the the place we got it for a thorough cleaning. If that doesn’t do the trick, then we’ll get it sent in for repairs. I just hope it isn’t anything major wrong with it. And I’m glad I got the four year warrenty to go with it.

Susquehannock State Park

	There’s two jack-in-the-pulpit flowers in this picture, one with lots of purple in it, and the other pale green. There is something that delights me in these so un-floral-like flowers.
	Mayapples are also known as “mandrakes”, for those of you into witchlore. They say that the fruit is edible (it looks like a small wrinkled lemon) but I’ve never had the guts to try one.
	Violets are also supposed to be edible, but it seems a sin to graze on anything so pretty. Violets love moist conditions, so there were quite of few of them along the trails, which ran by streams.
	I hardly ever get to see northern white violets in our area, so I was practically jumping up and down with glee when we stumbled across these. They are much smaller than their purple cousins, and very delicate looking. It took me over half a dozen shots to get this close-up, which is still not as nice a shot as I would have liked.
	The Professor didn’t believe me when I told him this was a wild geranium. I can’t wait until he wakes up and and I can show him these in my wildflower ID book.

The next two pictures are of Wissler’s Run, a small creek that runs along the western perimeter of the state park. There was supposed to be a small waterfall along it, but the Prof and I didn’t find that. A good excuse to go back and explore some more, if you ask me.

At the Susquehanna River there were two scenic overlooks. We only stopped at the southern-most one this trip. This is the sign that locates the points of interest from this vista. Why must people graffito these things? Makes me wish I could sit in a deer blind over the overlook with with a paint ball gun and mark all the idiots who scratch their initials into things, so that they can be identified and incarcerated by park police on the way out.

Peach Bottom Nuclear Power Generator is located not far from the state park across the river. I took a few shots of it, wondering if it was a wise thing to be doing in these days of Homeland Security. Nobody took my camera away, so I guess it was OK.

(Warning: The full picture is 1129 by 922 pixels – very large. This may take a while to load on a dial-up connection.)

Across the river from Peach Bottom is the first Bald Eagle Sanctuary in the US. I didn’t get to see any bald eagles yesterday, but they are commonly seen in this are of the Susquehanna.

Finally … I am not making this up. THIS is what was parked next to The Prof’s geo when we finished up our hike. It even had a little stuffed Scooby Doo toy dangling from the rear-view mirror. My mind boggles at the thought that someone actually paid good money for that paint job.