Now, I don’t want you to think that I have mis-titled my post, but frequent readers will remember that we received lemons in the “mail” the other day. We have been investigating what to do with such manna from heaven. I peeled and chopped one up to use in my thermos of tea on the river yesterday, and that was lovely.
What is even more lovely is this pan of lemon curd that Jim produced the other day.
What that was destined for was the angel food cake he also made. After it cooled, he sliced it into four layers and put the lemon curd in between, thus changing a fairly “dietetic” cake into a luscious dietary disaster. So, we are eating it despite the calorie count. We are way too obsessed with our body types any way, right?
So, in a bid to get out of the same county where that cake (temporarily) resides (that would be before it takes up residence on my hips), we headed off to Dallas County to go floating yesterday. It was a marginal day for floating, actually. Morning temperatures were in the mid-forties, which is definitely too cold. But the weatherman promised that it was going to warm up as the day progressed, and we chose to believe him. As it turned out, he was right and the day ended in the low 70s. Those of us who got wet were very happy about that!
Anyway, we decided to float beginning near lunch time, and the consensus of the group was that we really needed to float the 8 miles from Steelman’s access down to the takeout at Jay and Jeri’s place.
So, that is what we did. I foolishly put my over-confidence into Earl’s face (Earl is the River God) by starting out the float without any dry clothes to change into. Needless to say, my pride was dampened — nay, you might even say soaked — for I dumped my canoe within 100 yards of putting in. We hadn’t even got out of sight of the bridge at Steelman’s.
I saw some trash over in a clump of branches, and as is my usual habit, I paddled over to retrieve it. But my boat lifted its side on a submerged branch, the wind caught the increased sail of the bottom, I leaned just a little wrong to try to move the boat off the branch, and Bingo! There I was, dumped into waist deep water, soaked from head to toe.
Fortunately, my camera was securely ensconsed in a ziplock bag in my float bag, so it suffered no harm. My friends provided me with dry clothes, we dumped the water out of my canoe and proceeded on our merry way. Of course, it was made much merrier by the fact that my friends were able to give me grief about my early and complete dump. I opined that I was willing to be the sacrifice for the whole group, but Earl was not satisfied with just me. Our companion, Mable, also got a good soaking when she was focused on her fishing activities and drifted into a submerged log, with the same results.
The only one who didn’t dump was, not surprisingly, Jeri.
The colorful ball in this photo was the object that I was trying to retrieve from the river. Whatever Schaelyn is, I do not intend to vote for it.
There was definitely some sort of theme to the trash yesterday.
This little snake was out on the gravel bar where we were drying me out. He was definitely cold and lethargic. I figure he heard the weather report too, and was just out there waiting for the sun to come out. Anyway, I doubt he has been out of his egg more than a week or two.
This is how the river presented itself yesterday. Even though there was wind out there, most of the day it stayed up on the bluffs and ridges. Only towards the end of the day, after we were starting to get tired, did it come down into the river bottom itself. Of course, then it was a head wind and we were obliged to paddle into it down some of the long pools if we wanted to make any headway at all. Sometimes you would find yourself up against the bank all of a sudden when the wind sneakily came from your quarter. But it was still a great float day.
Next week there will be a couple of long pools that MUST be floated along so that the photographer can get the image of the dozens of redbuds leaning over and admiring their reflections in the water. It was just a little too early for that this week, the preliminary dressing up has just begun.
There were several spots on the river where you could see the high water mark from the rain storms earlier in the week.
That mark is about five feet above the water level. Some of the fields are still draining.
Now, when we stopped for lunch, I was able to capture this image of a little cricket frog on the gravel bar.
He’s quite small, as you can see from comparing him to the seedling next to him. Jim looked at my photos and said, “What did you do, annoy reptiles and amphibians all the way down the river?”
That pretty much sums it up.
These turtles wanted to stay on their branch. Even they thought the water was just a trifle chilly.
At our third (or fourth, or fifth — who knows?) gravel bar stop, I noticed this little frog jumping about. He finally landed in the river and I managed to get this shot of him as he also contemplated the temperature of the water.
I really wanted a better picture of this little guy, and after I wasted several microvolts of camera battery getting blurred images of him under the water, he finally decided it was just too cold there, and clambered out on the piece of wood.
Bear in mind this little guy is about the size of my thumbnail. I truly appreciated him posing so nicely for me, and to prove it I picked up all the trash I saw on the banks.
We didn’t just annoy reptiles and amphibians, we also annoyed birds. We saw numerous wood ducks, which I didn’t even try to photograph. Generally, you see them as they explode out of a drift of branches at the river edge and fly away from you down the river. Hopeless. We also saw several pileated woodpeckers, as well as chickadees. There were a pair of kingfishers battling for territory in the last big pool above the takeout. Mostly what we observed of that battle royale were flashing views of aerial chases and lots of angry vocalization.
The best duck picture was of this pair of escaped domesticated mallards. They were very different from the truly wild ducks in that they approached us. I believe they were miffed that we didn’t have any duck food with us.
The food we had we weren’t going to waste on any ducks. Lunch was spectacular. There was tuna salad, rye crackers, aged cheddar, thinly sliced salami, dried apricots, herbed goat cheese, and marinated artichoke hearts. “Don’t get a slice of salami, smear it with any of this goat cheese and then put a couple of artichoke hearts on it and fold it over. Don’t do that,” Jeri told us after she had done this exact thing. Of course, we all had to do that several times. The salami adds just that touch of saltiness, the marinated artichokes are juicy and . . . Well, kids, don’t try this at home! You have been warned and I am not responsible for the consequences.
Of course the piece de resistance of our float day was when we went by the heron rookery. That was the main reason we wanted to do the long float, to see how they are faring. About 5 years ago a tornado went through the rookery right in the middle of the chick season. The herons had just begun to fledge their babies, and the tornado just destroyed the whole area, tearing out the big sycamores they used for nesting and flinging them into piles and windrows. There were dead birds everywhere, it was so sad. The following year the remnants of the flock found a stand of sycamores several miles upriver to use, and they had four or five nests there. But this long pool and gravel bar is a perfect spot, and as soon as the young sycamores there started to get big, the flock started moving back to the original location. Last year they had 7 nests. This year I counted 10. (The upriver location is still being used, by the way.)
This is a group in the largest tree, there are about three other nests in this tree alone. They don’t seem to be sitting on eggs yet, just establishing territory and winding up for the arrival of the girls.
There are two herons in that picture, by the way. I captured this next image just as this one was settling down onto the branch.
The herons were not the only birds thinking about nesting. I caught this pair of vultures enjoying the hole in the bluff. Mostly we were seeing these birds soaring and enjoying the thermals and wind eddies, but even vultures have romantic interludes.
We emerged from the river a little damp but mostly unscathed, happy and relaxed. What we found waiting for us was a pot of delectable meatballs in marinara sauce, pasta to put them on and a fabulous spinach salad with toasted pecans and blue cheese crumbles.
Hope your weekend was as good as ours was!
Wow! Sounds like a great day on the river. Great pictures, too.
Love everything but the snake!
Brenda
That little snake was every bit of seven inches long. The way it was going it was going to be lunch for a hawk very soon.
I particularly love the vultures shot. And the salami, goats cheese and artichoke yumminess… that’s one I HAVE to try!
Sounds like a heavenly day, except for maybe the dunkings.
Well, the water wasn’t all that warm. And between the three of us we had enough dry clothes that no one was in danger of getting hypothermia. When you are going out to float you have to acknowledge the fact that you just may well get wet during the activity. Any other position or expectation is delusional. and it was a truly heavenly day.
the images are magnificent – love the frogs
Love lemon curd!