Turtle Hike

Ann and I arrived around 1, parked low and went east. We took the Lo Chi and had a wonderful hike. We saw a box turtle on the trail, her first, my fifth, and we admired her for a while. It has been kind of chilly for them to be out. Mine have been getting deeper and deeper in their overwinter hibernating holes, only coming out when it is warm enough. When we stopped to look at her she closed up tight and we wanted to make sure she was unharmed, so we decided to return on the same route to see if she had left the spot where we put her. I marked her spot on my Garmin, the first time I have done that.

So we hiked as far north as possible, even going down to the tracks and continuing north for a while. We finally headed back, and I pulled up her location, and we were just walking along and talking when my Garmin set off its alarm. We had arrived at the turtle spot. She wasn't there and we looked all around. That was good news. I love my Garmin.

Ann saw a couple of tiny young lizards, we saw some grasshoppers, including one like last week with the very loud click-clicks and bright yellow wings, a couple of nice butterflies, and a katydid. What we didn't see were fields of Pennsylvania leatherwings, like we did in Oct. of last year. We went through the same field area and there was nothing of note.

When we were returning to the turtle spot, we were happily going along and chatting when Ann suddenly shushed me. Off to the east, in a small clearing between us and the tracks, was a young man doing kung fu moves. There is a term for practicing moves by yourself but I can't remember what it is called. No, it wasn't Tai Chi, it was definitely Kung Fu. I wish I'd had my camera. He had to walk a long ways to get there, and I'm guessing he does it for solitude. Hope we during ruin his moment.

Eddie led the entire hike, as usual. I was extra tired toward the end, so instead of heading up to the craggy top and continuing we looped around the blue/yellow near the lot.

Total hike was 2.74 miles, 1hr 30 min. We gave Ed water twice and sat and snacked on apples.