Quite The Adventure

My brother, wife and I went on an adventure last night.  Around 6:00pm we had our mother drop us off in Swatara Creek, a creek about 45 minutes away from us, in a canoe.  We had all the necessary things for an evening of canoeing, a night of camping, and then another half day of canoeing packed into it.  We paddled for a while, going at what seemed like a fairly impressive clip, speeding past people in kayaks and tubes.  A little bit of fishing happened, a little bit of storytelling happened, a little bit of rope-swinging happened, and a little bit of canoe rocking that ended up with us taking in a good bit of water happened.  Also we passed under a tree at one point in time and ended up with a good few spiders crawling all over us and the canoe.  It was quite fun.
Every so often it would get rather shallow and we would get out to pull it over the rocks.  This was fine until we decided that we would be continuing to kayak after it got dark.  The full moon was a magnificent source of light and the big dipper was a great guiding constellation, but even so, when the water was shallow, it was awfully hard to guide the canoe over rocks without slipping or hurting your feet.  We passed an island that was dense with trees.  So dense that the moon was unable to shine through and be the source of light that it once was.  It also caused the water to be too shallow for a great distance, causing us to have to pull it rather far...the island was giving some of the crew members an eerie and unsettling feeling, so we got out of there as fast as we could.  By this point in time, everyone just wanted to find a place to camp, we kept going, our standards for camping spots as well as morale dropping.  This was around 9:30ish, things were getting awfully surreal.  Rounding a bend, we noticed some lights on one of the banks.  We realized it was a town of sorts.  We beached the canoe, left almost all of our stuff there and paraded through dense trees, bushes, and much poison ivy.  We came to a six foot wall that we had to scale...which was the wall of an old disgusting junkyard.  Trying not to get tetanus, we made our way through the junkyard, over a major highway, and to the doors of a tavern from 1804.  After trying oh so hard to get a couple of waitresses to understand that we were traveling by canoe and there smart phones were really not helping, we mostly gave up.  We called out mother and tried to get her directions to a place that we had no clue about its whereabouts.  We then had to get a canoe through all that poison ivy, weeds, trees, and bushes, and over a six foot wall.  Somehow we succeeded in getting it over, got picked up, then went to a diner at 2:00am.  A truly awesome experience.  Crazy and surreal, but awesome.  There are few things that I have done that I enjoyed more than canoeing almost blindly down a creek in the dark, relying solely on the moon for guidance, stars scattered all over the sky.

Not Swatara Creek

This isn't Swatara Creek.  I did not bring my camera.  It was probably for the best.  But I figured with an adventure like that, I could get away with taking a fairly standard picture of a creek.

Splash

Here is something a little more interesting than just a picture of a creek.  Only a little more interesting.

The Results

The results are in.
My experiment, though the conditions were not perfect, seemed to prove that the moon was not noticeably different from Saturday to Sunday.  You will have to pardon the branches and stuff in front of the moon, but in order to get it at 8:00pm, I just had to hope that the branches wouldn't affect the results.  I can't see how they would.  I was at a shelter on the Appalachian Trail at 8:00, and had no intentions of hiking a mile one way or the other to locate a clearing.  Here's what I have...

 Clear Sky, Unclear Skyline

The outline of the moon is pretty clear.  If only I wasn't surrounded by trees, the shot would have been perfect.  Note: this is the only time you will ever hear my complain about being surrounded by trees.

Combined

Here is Saturday's moon superimposed over Friday's.  The outlines match up perfectly.  I definitely don't see a difference in size.  Perhaps there was a difference in luminosity, but the tree branches may have screwed that part of my experiment up. 

The earlier part of my day was spent hiking a small trail with my wife that brought us to some vernal ponds and then we hopped on the Appalachian Trail and did about 6 miles before we found a good place to camp.

Vernal Pond

It's fairly crazy to be hiking through the woods and suddenly come upon a pond right in the middle of the path.  These ponds are only a few inches deep but have some strange animals and plants living in them.  Need proof? Look up Fairy Shrimp.

Eggs, Lots of Them

The only animal life we saw were eggs.  They were everywhere.  These Vernal Ponds will be filled with frogs soon.

An Experiment

I will be away this weekend.  I will be hiking the Appalachian Trail.  Sadly, though it is something I will accomplish before I die, I will not be hiking the entirety of it this weekend. 
My wife and I are going to Pine Grove Furnace State Park for some excellent hiking and photo opportunities.  It is considered the mid-point for thru-hikers of the AT, but it is also rich with history of its own.  I'm not going to go into details right now, for I am sure on my return there will be a history lesson accompanying my pictures, but suffice it to say: near the park is a once-secret WWII Prisoner of War Camp that housed 2500 German and Japanese POWs during its operation. Now, the woods of the surrounding area are in the process of reclaiming the land.  Interesting, right?  We sure think so...this state park combines our interests perfectly, nature and history.
The point I was trying to make in all of that rambling, was that Saturday, March 19th will come and go without an update.  Sunday will have two updates and probably a bunch of awesome pictures.

Today's picture is connected with my weekend plans.  Part of my desire to get out and camp this weekend is because the moon will be pretty massive on Saturday night.  Technically, it won't be any bigger than it is now, but the way we perceive it, it will actually appear to be 14 percent larger.  Also brighter.  This is due to the moon's orbit, it happens every month.  But this month is special, it's closest point in it's orbit will fall on a full moon.  It will be the biggest it has appeared to be since 1993.
So, my question is how different will it really appear to be?  The estimate is 14 percent, but will that really be noticeable?  Well, I'm going to attempt to find out just what the difference in tonight and tomorrow night's moon really is.  I'm going to use an 85mm lens on both nights, I'm going to use the exact same ISO, the same f-stop, and the same shutter speed.  I'm going to crop it, alter clarity and change the contrast all in the same way.  The only thing I can't keep exactly the same is the surrounding lights.  Tonight's moon will be in a more suburban area where as tomorrow night's will be out in the woods.  Maybe I'll make my way into a parking lot or something to take tomorrow's.  I'll do what I can to replicate tonight's surroundings.  Here is the moon on Friday, March 18th.  Make sure to check out Sunday's update for the results of my experiment. 

Friday's Moon

I cropped tightly in order to see just how much of the frame is filled with Saturday's moon.