Monday September 18th 2023

I woke to light rain on roof during the early morning hours. After closing a couple of windows I went back to sleep. When I woke up this morning the sun was out, but the TV weather talkers were calling for showers moving through before noon. For once, they were on target. A heavy rain shower moved through the area about 11:30AM. The afternoon was sunny and warm allowing the temperature to return to around ninety.

Walking around the state park today I saw a lot of progress on the various projects that are underway. It looks like the work at the boat launch has been completed. There is a new connection from land to the south side floating dock. The concrete work at the small pavilion in the day use area seems to be finished as well. The park staff removed the forms and cleaned up the loose cement. I think they may be back to do some grading around the new surface, but the cement work is done. The power pedestal work continues. The electrician was working on the last site this afternoon. I think the next step is to cement in the new pedestals.

I needed to get a few groceries this afternoon. The Walmart is very near Tom Bennett Park that I visited last week. I made another visit to get walking in at another location and to see what bird life is visiting the park today. Today it was a pair of Roseate Spoonbills that caught my attention. These are very pretty birds.

On my walk around the Disc Golf course at Tom Bennett park I came around a corner to find a pair of sandhill cranes blocking the path. They were on each side of the paved path about ten feet apart and about ten feet from me. These are big birds that could do a bit of damage if they decided they didn’t like me, but they didn’t seem to have any issues with me. Still, I wasn’t going to walk between them. I waited until they were both on the same side of the path before I walked by about four feet away from them.

The stop at Walmart for groceries was anticlimactic. The store wasn’t very busy on a Monday afternoon. The shelves seemed to be well stocked and grocery shopping was easy. They even had enough staffed checkout lines that I didn’t have to wait more than a couple of minutes. It was a very successful grocery shopping experience.