October 24, 2012 On the road again....

We're on the road this week.  Monday, we traveled, in the pickup, for 12 hours to get to our first destination in Midland, Michigan.  The next day we all went for a hike to the highlight of the town...a tridge.  It goes 3 ways over the place where two rivers come together.  The tridge is quite interesting on its own....but the area around it is pretty too.  It was so nice to be out and walking around at any rate.  For those who don't know me well.....I don't do sitting down for long periods of time....well.  Doing it for 12 hours straight was well beyond my good humor margin.  Everything hurt. 
Today, we were out early for a walk in town and found the wild turkeys we saw yesterday when we were out for the afternoon walk.  Yesterday, they were hustling down the sidewalk ahead of us.  Today they were out in an open field where they have a practice soccer net.  We let Toby go chase them so they would fly into the trees, which they did.  He was a pretty proud dog....look, I did it again.  He was probably wondering why I didn't shoot those big "partridges." On the way back, they were on the ground again and he pretty much ignored them altogether.  I was amazed at how close they let us get to them.  When I have actually been out hunting wild turkeys.....it wasn't that easy, believe me. 
Later this morning, we went out and explored the "city woods" hiking-horsetrail-skiing.....pretty much everything trails.  They were actually quite nice with a nice mix of trees and a creek.  During peak fall color, I imagine they would be  spectacular.  Now, the leaves on the trails were nice.

At any rate, Toby is a well exercised dog and he quite approved of the trails.  I thought they were ok myself.  But, any nice trail in the woods works for me.  It is always fun to see a bit of different plant life than the norm for what I see every day in "my" woods.  I even found and took a photo of a witch hazel blooming, which was pretty neat.  I had not seen them before and am not used to fall blooming trees.  Had to get back and on the internet to see what it was. 
Speaking of different.....there are a few other birds around here also.  One, I have no clue what it was this a.m. and flew just when I was going to get a photo.  There were a number of cardinals around also.  They are always fun as we don't see them that often at home.  The rest were pretty much what I usually see.  But, we are having a nice visit and good outside time....can't beat that.  :)