Thursday February 10th 2022

Today’s weather was a slightly warmer version of Wednesday. After a cold start in the thirties the temperature warmed to the upper sixties. A few high thin clouds marred the otherwise blue sky late in the day. It was a beautiful hiking day.

I got a really slow start today. My energy level this morning was really dragging, but this afternoon I took a long hike. I chose a trail call “The Sinkhole Trail”’ that I had not walked before. It lived up to its name and circled part of an old sinkhole in the woods. The trail stayed well away from the actual sinkhole. It appeared to have some water and swamp grass like vegetation in the actual hole. The hike was nice, but the sinkhole was anticlimactic.

On both of my hikes today I spotted and managed to get pictures of woodpeckers. I’ve heard them on my walks pounding on tree trunks every day, but today is the first day they have been close enough to the trail to spot them. I think I saw two different varieties of woodpecker.

Late in the afternoon at the Silver River Overlook I managed to get pictures of a few more water birds. It took a little more patience than normal. When I first arrived at the overlook it appeared as though all the birds were in hiding. Gradually I was able to find them hiding in the camouflage of the river bank. They almost seemed to know when I spotted them, because they would start to move around more soon after I spotted them.