At The Lake

 Yes, at the lake again. Today we had invited some friends to join us which was a nice change. I had slow cooked two pork shoulders last week and made up a pasta salad. Today I just added more BBQ sauce and heated it up over charcoal. Not a lot of pics, but here's a few.

Fishing

 My wife and her dad used to go fishing a lot when she was young. In memory of him on the first Fathers Day since his passing, she wanted to go fishing. So that's exactly what we did.

I had taken one of his old fishing rigs to try and catch something on. The rod is a little loose and the reel has seen better days. It will remain as it is in memoriam. It is also probably now officially retired. Sadly, I did not catch and fish using the old rig.

I did manage to catch a couple of chain pickerel, but to small to keep so they were released. Below are a couple of cool action shots I took from video as well as the video.

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Velociraptor Tracks!

 BIGFOOT HAS COMPETITION!

While visiting a local lake this morning, my wife noticed some very large bird tracks in the water. I went over to have a look and saw these:

Once we got home I did a quick search and they are blue heron tracks. In all my years playing in the outdoors I think this is the first time I have ever actually seen their tracks. I see the birds somewhat often, but don't remember ever seeing the tracks before. Pretty cool.

I was originally thinking crane, but they are more of just a "Y" track.

Snakes

 If you've been watching the channel, you know I've had an encounters with snakes on most of my outings since the weather got warmer. One of the local spots I go to often has an infestation of eastern water snakes. Yesterday on the walk back to my car a guy asks me if I'm taking pictures (I had my large tripod with me). I said sort of and he said take a picture of all these snakes. Ugh! I dislike snakes, I dislike them very much. I had already seen one, that was enough, but I went to see what he was talking about anyway when he asked what kind they were.

There's a small area on the pond they have railroad ties stacked to keep the bank from eroding. It's not very long, only two in length. He shows me the spot, and sure enough, there's at least 5 snakes laying on top, little snake heads poking out of holes in the wood everywhere. They were going in and out of the wood like something from a horror flick about snakes. All In all I did count at least 11 different snakes ranging from small maybe 8", to one that was about 4 feet.

The eastern water snake we have in my area isn't really venomous. Not technically. But, their saliva contains and anti-coagulant. They are strong, and because they can and do strike several times if they do bite you're going to bleed, a lot. It is recommended to get to an urgent care or hospital. I'd also personally recommend carry some like a blood clotting powder in your FAK if your in an area with them.

You also have to be careful as the colorings on the eastern water snake closely resembles a cotton mouth. Or in some instances, our eastern rattle snake and timber snake. I've seen them light colored like a rattler and darker like the cotton mouth, and almost black like the eastern racer. The latter is what I thought the first snake I saw yesterday was.

This was the first I saw yesterday.

This was a picture of the railroad ties.