Mating Damselflies, Swamp River

I paddled 13 miles on Swamp River yesterday and saw several critters but the highlight of the day was seeing all of the damselflies in the grasses and on the lily pads along the edge of the river. They are so small, most people probably wouldn’t even notice them. These little guys are only about an inch and a half long. Once you notice them, it’s hard to take your eyes off them (they are also quite hard to photograph, since they usually don’t sit still for very long). Adding to the difficulty was the wind. It was quite hard to capture these critters when the grasses were blowing around so much!

The 44th Regiment at Shiloh :: The Photo

This is the second of two photographs from the display at the visitor center at Shiloh National Battlefield.

The caption for this photo reads “The men of the 44th Indiana Infantry Regiment display their arms and accoutrements before the battle.” Written in the lower right corner is “Comy H 44 Ind”

The close-ups below begin from the left hand side of the above photograph. There is some overlap in the close-ups so some men will appear on more than one of the pictures.

Microburst

Wednesday's forecast predicted thunderstorms, and after a sunny humid day a rapid downpour descended on our neighbourhood in the afternoon. Later we learned that the next town over had experienced a microburst - an intense storm similar to a tornado, only with wind patterns in the opposite direction. Over 100 full grown trees were uprooted in the storm in the course of very little time. No one was hurt, but property was damaged.



The next morning I went on a ride and found the Minuteman Bikeway impassable, with huge toppled trees in close succession blocking the entire path. As municipal workers in neon vests surveyed the area, confused bicycle commuters wandered around looking for alternative routes without having to ride on the high-traffic main road which the Bikeway parallels.






The side streets were blocked. Municipal vehicles were gathering from all directions - those huge machines where you feed them pieces of tree and they mulch it up. Finally, I went on the main road and competed with a procession of buses in mid-day heat until my nerves had worn raw. Drivers were especially out of sorts that morning, behaving aggressively and honking at cyclists for simply being "in the way" - probably not realising that we had all been displaced from the adjacent bikeway and had nowhere else to be.



Riding under these conditions, I realised how spoiled I've gotten lately - forgetting how stressful cycling can be when drivers behave like this and there is no alternative route. I was getting honked at continuously for trying to take the lane. But as busses kept cutting me off and car doors swung open with abandon, taking the lane was the only safe option. Eventually a few of us formed a cluster: me, a woman in a yellow sundress on a cruiser, a teenager on a mountain bike, and an older man on a time trial bike. The cars went wild, but at least there was safety in numbers.






The pièce de résistance happened on my way home. I was already back in Cambridge and riding on a quiet MUP when around the bend a municipal carcomes charging at me head-on, taking up the entire width of the path. The guy slammed his brakes when he saw me and I slammed mine, feeling a huge surge of adrenaline. We stopped within inches of each other and I had one of those not-quite-but-almost crashes that I am so talented at. I kept the bike from hitting the ground, in the process contorting my body unnaturally and twisting my elbow. Ouch. But who cares about a little ouch; I am just glad he did not run me over. We had words, if you can call it that. Me: "You could have killed me!" He: "Sorry sweetheart, I didn't see you coming!"



I suppose the take-away lesson here is to stay off the roads after natural disasters? Easy enough for someone doing a training ride, but what about those who commute that way? I don't think the city even announced anywhere that the Minuteway Bikeway was impassable, whereas they certainly would have announced it had a major road become unavailable to drivers. Maybe when there are more of us, things will be different. I hope so.

Wagon

I'm sitting on what I think is part of an old wagon for hauling out the logs that were cut in this little canyon all those years ago.

Calm before the storm

Hurricane Dennis is on the way.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

Jurassic Way 4 - Braunston to Winwick

With Marta. 11 miles. Very hot. It felt like hard work. Dry underfoot apart from under the M1.






We started from the Admiral Nelson, crossing the canal to the towpath, and following it as far as Braunston Bottom Lock.





Here we crossed the bridge and made our way uphill - there are a couple of footpaths, and more by luck than judgment we ended up, as we should, going through Jetty Field Pocket Park, past the allotments and into the village, at a road junction. Just by the Wheatsheaf Inn, take Ashby Road to the right, follow it until it bends to the right. At this point the old road is now a track leading straight ahead - towards Ashby St Ledgers.

Looking back towards Braunston

The track narrows to a path, and climbs up to a minor road. Here we turned right and walked a short distance before turning left, in the same direction as previously. The path goes downhill to the A361, which we crossed, then followed the main street of Ashby St Ledgers through the village, until it bent left just before the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Leodegarius.



As well as some very attractive thatched cottages, the village has a Manor House, which was worked on by Lutyens, in the first third of the twentieth century.









Its gatehouse was a meeting place for the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, including Robert Catesby.

Timber-framed gatehouse - Catesby rode 80 miles from London to bring news that the Gunpowder Plot had been discovered 5th November 1605. He was caught up with, refused to surrender and was shot dead three days later.

The Jurassic Way continues straight ahead from the bend in the road, by the church.

We were in need of a break and a snack, but first we crossed several open fields before finding a suitable shady tree. After this we headed across more fields slightly downhill towards the M1 and the mainline railway of Watford Gap.

There's a bridge under the railway, but you have to cross the A5 - fortunately it is not too busy.








The path took us over the canal and up the towpath past the flight of locks and marina. A lovely oasis, spoiled by the noise of M1 traffic.









We crossed a field making for the tunnel under the M1. It smelled and felt rather as though cows had sheltered there - the wettest place for miles.






We followed the footpath into Watford, where we turned left along the main road, uphill as far as Church Street. Another left turn took us to a junction where we turned left, then right just past a barn, where wagtails alighted on the roof and swallows were flying around.

The path goes across some parkland, and makes towards Henley's railway bridge, which the then owner of Watford Court built so that the railway would be at a distance from his house. Watford Court was built in Elizabethan times, and demolished in the 1970s.

Henley's railway bridge

The path is generally well marked, but we did need to consult the map a couple of times - for reassurance at least. Most of the time it's a case of following the paths. There are a few places where a way mark would come in handy, for example when the path (clearly restored through a field of crops goes diagonally across a field, then zig-zags round field boundaries. This is marked on the map as near Flavell's Lodge, though we couldn't identify any building.

You come to a cross paths (crossroads for paths) where you take the right hand path past Silsworth Lodge - this can be identified. The path goes round the buildings, turning north briefly before going east towards West Haddon, and entering the village near the primary school. The path goes along a short street named The Green.

Turn right, go to the mini-roundabout, and turn left up High Street. Take the next left, Crown Lane, or walk through the churchyard. At the top of Crown Lane the path for Winwick leaves.

We bought lunch in the local shop, though there are a couple of pubs as well. Faced with the choice of sitting on a bench in the sun, or grass in the shade, the shade won, easily.






The final section was pretty straightforward, following the signed path north through fields and under the West Haddon bypass (A428).



The path arrives at a surfaced track near Glebe Farm. Follow this and turn right on the gated road which leads all the way to Winwick. We turned right at the crossroads in the tiny village and walked uphill past the Hall to the seat by the pond where we'd left the car.











Thanks to Northants CC leaflet - available only online as a PDF, alas.

The Badlands

I have been to the Badlands in South Dakota a few times now, and with each visit I enjoy the area even more. My previous trips were just quick "through-visits" on my way home from other travels out west. This time, however, I was able to spend almost two full days in the area. I arrived in Badlands National Park after spending the day traveling through the Pine Ridge Reservation and visiting Wounded Knee. The whole area is beautiful and I can only imagine what it must look like in the summer, when things are a little 'greener'. The grasses everywhere were still quite brown, nothing had really greened up yet.



As I arrived in the Badlands I started noticing a lot of standing water in the low-lying areas along the side of the road, and some patches of snow here and there. When I got to the park's visitor center the staff informed me that they had quite a bit of moisture in the past couple of weeks, in the form of both rain and snow. Consequently, there were lots of puddles and in some places larger pools of water. In the larger pools, choruses of frogs were croaking and singing to their heart's content. These pockets of water really made the visit interesting for photographs, as I was able to make several exposures of the hills of the badlands reflected in these pools of water.

While making the image above, about half an hour after sunset, a car pulled up alongside mine on the side of the road. A voice came from the window... "Great spot, huh?" I turned and voiced my agreement, then got up (I had been sitting on the ground with my tripod set low to get the above shot) and walked over to the car to chat some more. The friendly voice in the car belonged to Carl Johnson, who is currently the artist-in-residence at Badlands National Park. As it turned out, he's a photographer, too. He lives in Anchorage, Alaska but explained that he was a guide for a while in the Boundary Waters, up the Gunflint Trail. I said "No kidding... I'm from Grand Portage." To which he responded "I used to work as a security guard in the Grand Portage Casino during the winter, in between my summer guiding job." What a small world! It turns out he worked at the casino back when I was managing the marina in Grand Portage. At any rate, we had a nice visit and we swapped website information. If you'd like to visit Carl's site, go to http://www.carljohnsonphoto.com/ and if you'd like to see his work from the Badlands, click on the "Blog" link at the top of his main website page. He has some nice work, and its worth a bit of your time to visit his site.

(Above: My car's shadow on the painted hills of the Badlands....)

Tomorrow, I head for home. The Badlands marks the last of my "tourist" stops for this trip. I am staying in Duluth tomorrow night, and tuesday night I am scheduled to give a slide show and a talk about my trip and my photography in general to the Duluth-Superior Camera Club. Hopefully they will like what I have to share!