The Great Outdoors

I'm working on my tent reviews diligently, believe me. But sometimes a tent isn't even needed. Here's a picture of camp one year on the Black Forest Trail in Pennsylvania. My spot is in the foreground, Pard's is in the background. It was good fall weather. The next day I took the following picture of something people had built by an abandoned slate quarry on the trail. Strangely enough, the quarry is above a stream called Slate Run.

Yeah this is a well made thread, with excellent images of wonderful stuff! Great job there to the OP... yeah lol Gregg absolutely is NOT the op 😂

Really cool photos yo!👍=)

Just awesome! #17 👍

Thanks. Pard is my backpacking partner. His wife, I'll call her Pardette, is my kayaking partner. This was taken over Pardette's shoulder one day. The river goes to the left then turns sharply back to the right behind those rocks in the foreground. Just before the brush pile it turns sharply to the left and straightens out. The river was going to take us to the eagle but they don't let us get too close. We don't try to get close. It's just that it's easier to get downstream with our kayaks if we stay in the river.
edit: this is one of the eagle pair in the earlier pictures. I don't know which. It doesn't look big enough for the female so I'll guess the male. Brain is misfiring too much to try figure it out..

I'm working on that tent review. There's a lot to consider. In the mean time I'm going to post some random pictures because you can't stop me. I said Spring has some of our prettiest flowers. My favorite is the Spring Beauty. Unfortunately, my pictures of it are on the upstairs machine and I'm not going to go get them so here's what you get.
Let's start with the Pennsylvania state flower, the Mountain Laurel. It grows on a bush similar to a Lilac and has a very pretty flower that blooms around mid-June.

Red Trilliums, and especially White Trilliums (rarer) are favorites of mine. they, along with Spring Beauties and some other wildflowers, must bloom before the trees leaf out and starve them of sunlight. That happens around mid-May.

Not so much for the flower but for the butterfly. A Tiger Swallowtail on a Phlox flower. I learned they were territorial one day when i watched one chase another away from a patch of flowers, not once but twice.

Just because I like these guys. A Red Eft, or immature Newt. Newts are an aquatic salamander that lays its eggs in water. After hatching, the immature efts leave the water and roam around on land. I have to be careful on damp spring days because they seem to like forest trails. When seen head-on, they seem to be smiling, which may be why I like them.

..and just because I like this picture and you can't stop me. These insects are Water Striders, or as we always called them, Water Skeeters. They use surface tension to skate on water. The black blobs are caused by refraction where their legs indent the water surface.

Amazing pics. Have never seen laurels. Really beautiful.

Hey Laurel, where are you now?

Thanks, digital cameras can make a competent photographer out of anybody. Just keep clicking. What they don't get right is atmosphere. Sometimes autocorrect ruins the lighting and I have to play around with other settings until i get it right. It's cumbersome because I only know the rudiments of many settings. That camera died. Too many expeditions. I'm weighing options for a new one. My last was smarter than I am. That would be a plus in the next.

Great photos! You're quite lucky, one beautiful wilderness, and zooming on your first image yeah that flight of an eagle's way cool, nicely done, and even streaming in a kayak, nice! 👍

Nice

Great pics! I used to love watching Water Striders as a kid. I don’t remember the last time that I’ve seen any.

I like taking pictures but I have to give most of the credit to that camera. I don't remember the exact model. It was a Sony Cyber-Shot with a 20x optical zoom and Zeiss lenses. It took amazingly clear zoomed pictures. It's auto mode was pretty good and it had a number of manual options for adjusting lighting and color. It also had some cool effects that I'll post pictures of somewhere, someday. Now i have to get ready for my first hike in too long. I'll try take pics but it's just an iphone and a dreary day.

I got a few pictures but nothing really noteworthy. I'll post a few soon. In the mean time, here's something. Back near the start of this thread I posted a picture of a Jack-In-The-Pulpit flower in early spring. Here's what the seeds look like in the fall. They form on the central "Jack" and later the rest of the flower wilts away.

This will be quick. It was a short hike out to some huge boulders that were dumped by the glaciers. I don't remember when exactly. It was before my time. As predicted, it was a dreary day. We got misted on a couple times and sprinkled on once. The trail is the dotted red line. The stream it crosses is about four feet wide and four inches deep. Here's a description of the trail. https://myhikes.org/trails/blue-run-rocks-hiking-trailThe trail

It had been wet and drizzly for about a week so it was a good day for fungus. One of my myriad hobbies is taking pictures of fungi. Be thankful you're only getting the cream of the crop. I have no idea what they are. I just take their pictures.


This was interesting. A smaller tree being engulfed by a larger.

Entering a laurel thicket. They can become impassable without a trail. They're rare where I grew up. I think they like a few hundred feet higher in elevation, as this was. The right turn ahead went down to the rocks.

The object of the hike. It's hard to believe they are not originally from this location.


Yep, a good day for fungus

...and moss

Th-th-th-that's all folks

even the fungus looks nice! and nobody wake kate moss when she's sleeping ...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I see it in everything out there. I'm trying to only post the best of the best.

🤣 nah that's his dry hilarious @ humor, he be like'n though your fantastic photos but you mentioned moss so it opened the dictator up to drop some 😂

I spent the afternoon with family at someone's cottage on Keuka Lake. Keuka is the Y shaped Finger Lake in upstate New York. We were on the west side of the west arm, somewhere above the split. It was almost completely clouded over all day but I got one or two decent shots.
Looking to the north. The hill in the distance is the end of this arm.

The real reason for the post. Upstate NY in full color. And I found a little sun. This was directly across from the cottage.

A little piece, no, a big piece of heaven.

I so love water features. Over here we call drains rivers

Big lake! Some of your fungi pictures remind me of cut open petrified wood I've seen in Arizona, the striations and colors. Beautiful area.