Tourists in Our Own Neighborhood

We typically lounge around on Mondays, but we've been meaning to check out the beautiful park down the street for four months now and finally made the decision to go today. I knew Evan would be game. He's quite the road warrior in his JEEP stroller and loves to be outside...so we packed up our gear and headed out for our very flat hike to the park...all of two miles! On our way we were startled by some commotion in a tree above us. I looked up and screamed when I saw two beady eyes staring back at me. There was a raccoon perched on a branch feeding on berries. We realized it was just a baby so I courageously made an attempt at taking its picture, but decided zoom would work just fine. It was a great start to our little outdoor adventure!

The park, Ponce Preserve, has a couple of trails that you can take leading to either the beach or an open area where a massive green mound oak tree resides. The trunk of the tree is the width of at least two cars while its numerous branches are probably half that size. Our admiration however was short-lived due to an attack of mosquitoes. Evan's soft, white flesh to a mosquito is like candy to a 5 year old. We decided to go off the beaten path and make our way out of the woods. Across the street from the trails is a dock extending about half of a mile through the marshland into the Halifax River. There are numerous shallow canals that feed into this marshy area and eventually lead into the river. If we owned a canoe or kayak we could leave from our back dock and make it to the river...oh, in probably a few days with our lack of endurance! Actually it wouldn't be too bad. Maybe once Evan is old enough to sit in a small boat we will look into doing that sometime. Anyway - so we traveled the dock out to the river and sat and watched the pricey boats go by. The weather was awesome today! It was about 78 degrees and just a few clouds in the sky. Now that Christmas is over I can start appreciating the warm weather again. We took a few pictures to remember the day which I have posted for you. I have also added all of our albums from July to November. Click on the image and you will be directed to that album. There is ordering information on the album's site if anyone sees a picture they'd like to have.

Until next time!

Ponce Preserve-12/'08