A day at the lake

I’ve had a couple of great weekends getting out and about. Last weekend I went with Kelly, Resa, and the boys (Jack and Sequoia) to Parker Canyon Lake for a walk on Saturday. Of course in all the prepping at the house given that all the dogs were excited to be going somewhere in the car (doesn’t matter where, it’s a car ride, they’re excited…), I managed to forget the camera. Didn’t remember this tidbit until we were nearly to the West Gate on Huachuca, and it would have been an hour+round trip to go back and get it. So, we just packed up the camera, left the dogs, and went without them on Sunday to take pictures at a couple of strategic spots around the lake.

When we went on Saturday, there was a great crooked tree that I wanted to take pictures of. We noted which way around the lake would be the shorter walk to get to it, and planned to go back on Sunday. When we arrived on Sunday, a retarded cow, her very retarded, very fat 6-year-old, and her butch, spikey-haired, tattooed friend had taken up residence with floaties very near to the tree on some rocks by the water. Of course, when I say ‘retarded’, I don’t mean in an ‘extra 21st chromosomes’ way, but a ‘when the zombies come and the fat and stupid are the first one’s eaten, these folks could move to the front of either line…” kinda way. I was not amused. I did manage, however, after walking back and forth and framing very carefully, to take a pretty decent shot. Then, when we got around to the other bank of an inlet nearby, I managed get another shot with only spikey haired friend’s head and the foot section of the kid’s floaty sticking out from behind the rocks… hello Photoshop! Thus, I ended up with these:

I had been trying to get shots of one of the squadron’s worth of dragonflies which were around, but to no avail. A little way further around the lake, as if in response to this, one flew up, landed on a bush, and then proceeded to stay for a minute or two before circling and re-posing in a different direction:

Even more difficult to capture were the tiny blue dragonflies which didn’t come up very much, but tended to hover right above the surface of the water. Managed to get one on the way out as it stopped on a piece of grass sticking up out of the water, then caught two others making more dragonflies up on the bank:

Just below the first blue dragonfly, Kelly noticed a couple of tiny fish flitting around just under the surface of the water:

On the subject of bugs copulating, later I saw what appeared to be a weirdly malformed dragonfly… until it landed and I figured out what was really going on:

Those were two of the largest, nastiest horseflies I had ever seen, and because I can’t un-see them, now you can’t either!

There were a couple of boats going by, with people fishing, dogs just hanging out, you name it. These two looked pretty happy:

After the boat went by, an older lady was walking up the beach toward us. I wanted to take her picture as she was approaching, but since I didn’t want to also yell across the 50-yards or so between us if that was okay with her, I just surreptitiously shot the picture when she turned around and walked back the other way…

Also managed to get a couple of random shots as we were walking:

There were lots and lots of birds out, from the smaller birds collecting stuff along the shoreline to build nests, to the rather large buzzards circling overhead:

That particular buzzard got dive-bombed by two smaller birds back across the lake, above the bait and tackle shop. We had seen some nests there previously with babies, and when we got back over we realized that it was the two mother birds running off the much, much larger buzzards. Didn’t run us off though:

Of course when mom showed up they were all very demanding:

Typical…

On Saturday, I managed to shoot a picture with Kelly’s cell-phone camera of one of the deer that we saw on the way around the lake. On Sunday, no sign of any deer anywhere. Until… on our way out of the lake area after shooting the birds at the bait and tackle shop, who did we run across but (most likely) the same deer from the day prior: