Hitchcock Woods

The Geocaching Devaluation

Pioneer Trail

We haven’t been doing a lot of geocaching lately, but today was to be a day to get back out there.

We have always been fair weather cachers, but mainly the lapse is because we have run out of local caches of the type we like to hunt. In August Geocaching.com ran a 31 Days of Caching promotion and during that time the local caching group endeavored to place a new geocache for each day. Several of them were along the bike/walking trail adjacent to the newest section of I-520 and a few of them were at least regular sized containers, more like our cup of tea, so this was where we were going.

As we were finishing up our morning beverages at our usual spot, Donna said, “I don’t feel like geocaching.” “My feelings aren’t hurt,” I replied. “Can we just go for a walk in the woods?” she asked. That is what we did.

133,000 Angry Crows

Bird of Prey

We went for a Sunday morning hike in Hitchcock Woods and when we got near Fulmer Stable towards the end of the walk we could hear a murder of crows squawking like crazy. It sounded like a hundred thirty three thousand birds shouting about something. As we exited the woods onto the sandy road leading to the parking area we could see what all the hullabaloo was about, a very large bird of prey was perched in what was obviously their favorite tree.

I had just enough time to get out the camera, locate the bird, zoom in and snap this one photo of his backside before he flew to another branch further into the tree. The crows never stopped making a racket and a few minutes later our hawk had had enough and he flew right over our heads and deep into the woods. I never did get another picture of him.

Today on the way to work this morning the Emperor ticked past the 133,000 mile mark, so tonight I gave him a sponge bath in the garage as a present. Well, that and he got filthy when the grounds crew at the plant weed-eated the strip of grass right behind where we park.

Its Thursaturday!

Walking On A Horse

It is a day off of work because of the holiday, so even though it is Thursday it feels like a Saturday. Tomorrow won’t feel like Sunday because it is back to work. We went for a walk in Hitchcock Woods this morning and this afternoon I listened to the FRS on the radio while Donna baked brownies to send over to a local National Guard Unit in Afghanistan.

Last night we missed out on the fireworks at Fort Gordon in Augusta because we were scared off by the weather (they had them anyway.) So tonight we got on the tandem and rode over to the east side of town to a small festival that was going to have fireworks. They didn’t have them for budgetary reasons. They will have fireworks at the end of tomorrow night’s Augusta Greenjackets game. Maybe we’ll go see them if the weather cooperates and if we feel like sitting through 2-1/2 hours of stupid corporate sponsored, fan participation stunts interrupted by a baseball game to get to them.

Merrell And ?

We went for a 4 mile walk in Hitchcock Woods this morning. Started at the Fulmer’s Stable entrance and headed uphill until we couldn’t go any further then looped back a different way down the hill. Because our start point, being near the stables, is a major horse riding meeting spot, we have to keep our heads down while walking around near there to avoid the recycled hay piles. As we walked I kept noticing a lot of small flowers along the trail. About a third of the way through our walk I decided to document all the different ones I saw.

Because I can only positively identify what the very last picture is of, the first person who can identify the kind of flower, plant our fungi in all of the first nine pictures will win a fabulous prize of my choosing. Just leave your answers in the comments.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1230

Carpet Of Ferns

Carpet of Ferns

After breakfast at the usual place we went for a walk in Hitchcock Woods. A nice little 3-1/2 mile trek and we had the woods practically to ourselves, only seeing a group of three people walking one trail over and a woman walking what looked like a dozen leash less dogs, some of whom trotted over to give us a closer look. When Donna asked her how many dogs she had with her, she replied, “Too many.”

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1220

A Walk in the Woods

Memorial Gate

For the first time in quite a while we went for a walk in Hitchcock Woods. From slightly chilly at the start to just right at the finish, it was a great day for one. For the drive home we even got to drop the top on the Emperor. It was a busy day in the woods too; we saw 5 folks on horseback, 3 fox squirrels, 2 people entering as we were exiting and 1 lone jogger.

Friday we ordered the cabinets and counter top. Yesterday we bought a pendant light for over the sink, the white subway back splash tiles and picked up our online ordered faucet. Today we meet with the contractor and set a date, he starts demolishing our kitchen on February 4th. I also wrote him a deposit check of 30% of his fee and it took two tries. I ran out of room the first time when the figure was X thousand, X hundred, X tens, X ones point XX cents, so we rounded up to X thousand & X hundred dollars.

This evening we spent our $200 microwave allowance on a really cool retro looking microwave, a 4 slice toaster and a new electric teapot.

The only thing left for us to buy for the project now is the under cabinet lights and it is turning out to be harder than I thought. The little puck lights I first picked out were going to be like $80 for both sets. The contractor poo-poo’d them as they were more homeowner DIY and not really set up to be hardwired in like he planned. So I started hunting the web for something more appropriate and mostly found stuff the pushed the $400 mark for our set up. Gotta find a sweet spot somewhere in between those two.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1192

Poke Berry Field

We went for a walk in Hitchcock Woods this morning to take advantage of the slightly cooler temperatures. We did a little 2.9 mile loop* and we passed through a spot I’m not so sure we have been before, Poke Berry Field. If we have visited this spot before it was so long ago that I have forgotten it. The berries must be about to get ripe as someone has parked a purpose built Poke Berry Trailer here in the field in preparation for their harvesting.

*I say little, because when we got home my wife felt she hadn’t walked enough, so she went back out and did her 3 mile loop on the dirt roads of the horse district…

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1143