In the meantime....back to the trip....It is now Saturday, May 22nd and we woke to ....
SNOW! That is what it looked like when we opened the camper door.....
From the 'bedroom' window....the picnic table and camp chair where we sat in the sunshine and read the day before......
In the morning I decided to walk back down to that little lake we had visited the first day....thinking it would be neat to get some 'birds in the snow' pictures..... The road, at this stage, was still bare and wet.....
There is something just 'wrong' about seeing a Warbler in snow. This was a male Yellow rump Warbler, of the Audubon variety (yellow under chin, not white)....I think it was getting little bugs off the underside of the leaves.....
Kind of an eerie looking landscape.....
The path I was following was definitely turning white.....
By the time I reached the lake (which according to my notes is called 'Loch Leven'....the snow, which had been quite light, really started to come down and was driven by a strong wind....I'm pretty sure that is a Caspian Tern on the shore, one of several....along with the pair of Canada Geese (according to Ebird....IF these are Caspian Tern that would be really exciting....)
There were lots of Chipping Sparrows on the sandy area of the beach.....
The poor Red-Neck Grebe was still sitting on the nest...trying to keep eggs warm in the driving snow must have been a challenge....hope they made it.
You can barely make out this female Red Wing Blackbird through the snow....
Hard to see but there were lots of Tree Swallows and even Black Terns flying really low over the water....I guess that is where any bugs that might have ventured out in the weather, were.
a last look one way (the wind was at my back when I faced this direction)....
and blowing right into my face (and camera) when I faced this way....
back in the trees the wind was better but there was no let up in the snow.....
This squirrel had the right idea, it was sitting on the leeward side of the tree to eat it's lunch.
Here is what I'm sure is a Pink - sided Junco....even though Ebird doesn't have them on the species list for that area.....
Back at the camper, even Shantz looks thoroughly disgusted by the weather! We saw a couple of units pull out, but pretty much everyone else was just hunkered down, waiting it out.
We attempted another walk in the afternoon. By then, there were 6 to 8 inches on the ground....
The poor birds, like this Swainson's Thrush were in any clear area they could find...in this case it is only clear because there was water there......
another look at the Swainson's Thrush between the snowbanks.....
and here are some Robins and other assorted species....
the trail.....
The amphitheater....that was as far as we made it, it was just too deep to slog through....
The road now was definitely 'white'....
There is the camper..... thank goodness we'd had the foresight to deal with the tanks the day before.....
Even poor April seems in shock....we'd had to plonk her in a tire track on the road so that she could 'pee'.....everywhere else was too deep for her....and inside she had to wear a sweater....our concern now was, would the propane hold out because the furnace was running virtually non-stop.
Come evening and it continued to snow...Ernie and Shantz ventured out again.....
Not me! but I didn't have to. While I was doing the supper dishes these deer wandered past the campsite. Come bedtime, it was still snowing.
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