Breaking In

I got a new car.  I bought it on Tuesday and it was delivered to my house Thursday night.  I still have my old car so I put an sign in the window of my old car indicating it was for sale.  I drove my old car to work on Friday so people could see the sign.  So today was the first chance to use the new car.  Did I want my first ride to be a trip to the gas station to buy gas for the lawn mower or a trip to the health club? No.  No, I did not.  I wanted the first trip in my brand new car to be epic and to bring good karma for all the future road trips I will take.  So we drove to Lake Maria State Park to hike, look for morels, and enjoy the spring weather and spring wild flowers.

We spent 5 minutes in the driveway figuring things out.  We synched up another phone to the car.  I called that phone with my phone and ended up talking to myself from my phone to my car. Whew!  Mind blown.  Also so much laughter I could hardly breathe so I sounded like a heavy breather which led to more laughter.  Eventually we made our way to Lake Maria State Park. We took a 5.5 mile hike and found some fiddlehead ferns.

And other unidentified wild flowers.  And although we searched under standing dead trees, we did not find any morel mushrooms.

The woods were full of colorful wildflowers.  We found a bunch of small ponds with chorus frogs singing.  We saw woodpeckers, pied billed grebe, trumpeter swans, blue jays, belted kingfisher, turkey vultures, a great blue heron, common mergansers, bald eagle, and a mallard taking a nap in the sun.

This dead tree stump is so fantastically splintered that it almost looks like a palm tree.  This would not be a good spot to land with a parachute.

We suspected these two geese had babies but couldn't really see them until they swam away on the water.  The adults kept the babies out of sight of us as best they could.

This tick shaped lump was on a tree so it must be a wood tick?

I believe this is a grouping of marsh marigolds near the trail head at the end of our walk.

We looked but not see any turtles aside from the one in the photo above.  After our walk we were starving so we ate at Chatterer's in Monticello and drove home.  Epic road trip; the first of many in this car I hope.