Insomnia struck overnight and at 430am no amount of telling
myself to get back to sleep worked. I couldn’t stop myself picking up my kindle
to read more of the Johnny Marr autobiography I’m currently enthralled by. That man has worked with so many of my
favourite musicians and bands in the world, it’s incredible, such a talent and
he makes it sound easy. Do I sound just
a little bit jealous and/or bitter?! It
got to just before 6am and I could hear the chatter of birds outside, so I got
up to see the sunrise. My view was blocked by trees from our site so I walked
to the shore of Lake Erie. I took about 50 images at different stages,
so I’ll try to cut it down a little….
 |
| Sunrise over Lake Erie |
When the sun got too high to be able to look at any more, I
thought I’d better head back to the RV.
For once, I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye. Something was moving in the bushes and it
wasn’t a bird, or a squirrel. What is THAT dangling from a branch?!
That was a treat for me, but then I noticed a much larger
animal in the foliage and was delighted to see a possum along with five babies
clinging onto her back, picking her way through the undergrowth. I watched them for some time but then she
brought them even closer to me.
A totally unexpected and delightful start to my day.  |
| All aboard! |
I got back to the RV to find, unsurprisingly, that Simon
hadn’t discovered me missing. I was
famished and felt very awake until I sat down and started to doze off. Amazingly, I did manage to get back to sleep
until 9-ish, so hopefully won’t be too much of a zombie for the rest of the
day.
Our plan worked!
Heading back down to the front office there was no problem in us staying
another night for no additional cost. But our prime location from last night
was already booked, so it meant moving a couple of spaces along. No problem.
Despite not having to fork out for another night camping, of course there were
other essentials that had to be bought – like two bundles of firewood and an RV
Christmas tree decoration for….. wherever we may be next Christmas?!
We planned to head to the beach, especially after we’d torn
ourselves away from Lake Michigan’s turquoise waters the other day. But
conditions weren’t quite right today.
Gusting winds were creating sandstorms by the exposed lake’s edge and
the waters looked a murky brown. Cancel that idea.
 |
| Soft-shelled turtle with a very weird nose... |
Instead, I dragged Simon to the nature centre in the park
which had a board walk trail a couple of miles long around the marshes. After all, this was one of my top US ‘birding’
locations so that is what we’re here for!
Simon put on the usual pretence of being forced to do something he didn’t
want to – but it didn’t stop him spotting some wildlife for us.
 |
| Above and below are the same two birds - you'll just have to believe me - the one on the right is flirting so he goes from skinny to...... puffy! She doesn't look very impressed. |
 |
| Screech owl |
 |
| Another screech owl |
It may have been very
windy, but it was still humid. I started
to look a little pink on the shoulders and some bugs came out to start making lunch
of my legs, so we had clearly spent enough time on the boardwalk!
After lunch we had a chilled out afternoon and evening. I made chicken kebabs to cook on the fire, Si
played guitar and we got excited looking at the line up and stage times for our
forthcoming festival weekend. Well, we
have broken away from our old lives but we couldn’t go a whole summer without a
music festival, could we?!
No comments:
Post a Comment