Sunday, July 01, 2007

Creek Canoe Weekend

Headed down Friday evening to meet DH at his friend's place on Craig's Creek. Several of his high school friends will also be there - I'm amazed at the longevity of their friendships. When I left high school I never looked back and had no friendships to maintain....I now see people I attended high school with and we catch up but that is all...well, my class is planning a 30 year reunion this year and I plan to go. Time does seem to heal those high school wounds...

Friday night was cooking out and the guys played cards - let's just say I went to bed early. Something about drinking cold beverages sitting along the creekside...Saturday morning we had a hearty breakfast at Maw and Paw's in Eagle Rock and then on the James River for a day of canoeing! I hope to be able to recover the pictures from the memory stick... and I was able to! CVS has a great digital camera photo service for the novice picture taker - I was able to plug in the memory card from my ruined camera into their picture printer and copy selected pictures onto a CD and only cost $2.99. Good deal! Here's the last pictures taken with my old Sony cyper-shot....

I spotted this box turtle close by our camp site. Did you know that box turtles can live up to 120 years in the wild? He crawled into the weeds along the creek bank after I took this picture - I guess the commotion was just too much for him.


These shasta daisies were growing along the corner of the gravel parking lot close to the place we put our canoes into the James River.

The river was quite muddy due to the hard rains that we had experienced earlier in the week. The rains dumped plenty of water but little of it soaked into our rock hard clay soil - most ran into the rivers and streams.


A view of the river towards the small community of Eagle Rock...


We floated to the riverbank for a bathroom break .... I spotted this frog on my short hike to find a private bathroom spot. The presence or absence of frogs is an indication of the health of the environment - they serve as a kind of "canary in the coal mine" in the countryside.

Shortly after I took this picture we turned over the canoe and the camera fell into the river....the rest of the weekend was relaxing. I slept soundly Saturday night and got up early and cooked breakfast for all the guys after they had a late night of playing cards and trying to pretend they were still 21. I believe the greasy bacon and egg sandwiches were appreciated....