Golden Sky

Today was a free day.  A day all to myself.  So, after sleeping in and eating a massive bowl of granola, I grabbed my camera and headed for the woods.  I'm rather lucky, see, in order to get to the woods you have to go for a nice walk along the river, pass tons of dogs and waterfowl, meander across a meadow and climb a few rolling hills.  Not a bad way to reach my destination.  

...and not a bad destination.  Those trees were very tall.  They might just be able to get at whatever it is they are reaching for.

From The Prehistoric To The Current

I was studying some fossils yesterday.  Apparently I need to do more studying/learning because I found out that spiders and scorpions existed during the Cretaceous period.  I suppose if I think about it, it makes sense...other arthropods existed then...I just never thought about spiders doing so, and definitely not scorpions.  I also came across a beautiful trilobite.  (By "came across" I mean bumped into white visiting a museum). Here are the fossils of said creatures...

Today I was walking through Ormeau Park in Belfast.  I found a patch of mushrooms.  By no means am I an avid mushroom identifier, but after some research, I believe these to be panaeolus sphinctrinus.  Any awesome and capable mushroom identifiers out there?  Am I right in my assumption?  Or perhaps I found a new species? Eh eh?

Going With The Train Theme

In that yesterday's photo was a caboose, I thought I could keep the theme alive and do another train related photo.  So have some oil tankers.  They have been sitting in the woods by some old train tracks near my house...my brother found them fairly recently and showed them to me.  Now I shall show them to you.

Tankers in the Trees

I don't know when these were last used, but I doubt it was very recent, whenever it was.  The weeds and bushes have grown around them, making it seem like it has been years, many years, since they've been touched.

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.