Nice Day for a Brisk Walk

A beautiful day: crisp and cool, with a bright sun and clear blue sky. My husband Denis had business in Glens Falls this morning, so I came along to have lunch with him at Rock Hill Cafe, then on the way home we stopped at Moreau Lake State Park for a brisk walk around the lake. And I mean brisk! We got around the whole lake in about the same time it usually takes me to go about a hundred yards. When I'm by myself, poking along looking for stuff, I probably spend as much time on my knees as my feet. But when my husband leads the way, we hustle. There he goes, in the photo above, charging ahead as I dawdle behind. (Note that there's no more ice on the lake; pouring rain and warm temperatures since Tuesday had melted it all away.)

We did stop together to look up close at some things, including this sweet baby Pitch Pine cone, as prickly to touch as it was cute to look at.

And of course I had to stop at this fallen log, since it called out HI! to me in such big, bold letters.

The log, long fallen and denuded of bark, showed lots of tunnels from some kind of bark beetles. I hope they're not the tunnels of Emerald Ash Borers. I think they're not, since as far as I know, that dreaded beetle has not yet been reported at Moreau park. At any rate, this tree has been dead a long, long time, probably longer than EABs have been found in Saratoga County. Whatever chewed these tunnels, they do look like some kind of ancient hieroglyphics, spelling out some tale that will ever remain a mystery.

Maybe this is a waving hand, to go with that HI! up above.