This And That

We walked from Noland Ferry to Point of Rocks last Sunday. When we arrived at Nolands Ferry, we found that the road to the parking lot that we normally use was closed because of the flooding that had taken place the previous week. We ended up parking in the extended parking area on the other side of the trail, closer to the main road. Once parked, we walked beyond the gate preventing our access to the original parking lot to see what the flooding had left behind. The road to the boat ramp was covered in a layer of mud deposited by the river. It looked quite slippery.

We have been using a app on our mobile phones during our walks the last few months to help us identify some of the birds that we have been listening to. There have been names of birds that have shown up on the app that I know nothing about. Last weekend I believe we heard the sound of the bird in the picture below. I am seeing this bird for the first time in our woods.According to Merlin, it is called an Acadian Flycatcher.

Talking about the Merlin app, I was hoping that one would be able to learn bird sounds so that I could identify the birds in the future without help from the app. I realize now that this is a hopeless endeavor. There is no way that I will be able to remember the individual patterns of sound. Even a software app is better at this!

I was relaxed enough during this walk to be looking around the trail and notice the small leaf in the picture below. I thought that the picture would be nice to use for an artist’s interpretation, be it either a sketch or a painting. I might be convinced to send a higher-resolution picture to whoever might be interested in such an endeavor.

A follow up from the flooding that we witnessed couple of weekends ago at Dam 4 – It turns out that we missed all the drama and excitement that day when a couple of barges moored near the area of McMahons Mill on Big Slackwater, a few short miles upstream from Dam 4, got loose due to the flooding and started floating downstream. The barges had been involved in work being done by the National Park Service to repair the trail running beside the river in those parts. (This is a section where the trail gets damaged regularly, and even destroyed on occasion, when the river gets rough.) A big barge, including an excavator on it, got loose on Saturday evening, and a smaller barge broke free from its moorings on Sunday. If we had been there at the right time, we might have seen the barges floating by Dam 4 on the river. The smaller barge was eventually snagged at Dam 4 on Sunday. The big barge (and it was really big!) made it all the way to Harpers Ferry. They had to shut down bridges over the river along the way temporarily because of concerns about the damage that might be caused if the barges smashed into one of the piers. At the end of the day, this barge only struck the railroad bridge at Shepherdstown. Apparently, there was little damage done. There are quite a few news reports and videos about this event to be found if one does a search on Youtube. You can get an idea about the size of the bigger barge in this particular video which was taken at Dam 4.

On a different topic, I want to point readers to a blog that I would highly recommend. My sister-in-law and her husband have started out on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in Spain. They are following the French Way, starting from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France, crossing the Pyrenees from France into Spain during the first (and probably the most difficult) stage, and then walking across Spain from east to west after that. You can follow their travels here.