Great Blue Heron and Bald Eagle

I posted one pic of this GBH over at Time Stand Still...thought I would show this other one here...it just amazes me every time I see them perched in a tree.   I saw him while fishing at Mansfield--he was at the base of the dam the whole time till he flew up right behind me.

Now look close at this pic...you might even need to enlarge it to see.  The other thing that watched me fish was this fellow here.  I kept watching for an eagle to be soaring overhead and happened to glance up the creek just in time to see him fly up from below and perch there.  He was there a big part of the time I was there, and was there when I left. 

I could not get any closer to him...he was on the far side of the creek and on up past the dam.  It always amazes me to see them...always improves any day to spot one. If I had not seen him fly up, from below, I would never have spotted him.  He just blended in with the background.  (The photo above is even a cropped version of the original.)
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It is raining and thundering here this morn.  And warm compared to the past few days.  It is even supposed to get up into the 80's for today.  Showers are in the forecast for today and tomorrow.  I am hoping this improves the chances for nice autumn colors.  I was afraid it was going to be so dry that the change would not last long.

The dam at Mansfield, Indiana

The above photo was taken in May of 2010....the water is maybe up a bit, but now much.  Notice the wide expanse of water below the dam...then look below at the photo taken September 19 of this year.

What a difference in the amount of water coming over the dam.  The kids used to take their inner tubes and drag them up to just below the dam and then float down and come over the ledge of rocks.  They would not be doing that in the bottom photo.

We have had misting rain all day long...hopefully we will eventually get enough to get things back to normal.  We still have a long way to go.  Sometimes I wonder if we will ever catch up.  The creeks just seem to stay so shallow.

It has been a trying sort of day.  We went to Walmart this morn...I try not to go to Walmart on the first of the month, but was out of catfood.  The canned variety.  My cats had been living on dry catfood for two or three days and they thought they might starve if they had to go another day without a can of food.  So off we go.

Well, there was this one little old lady that probably thought I was a stalker...everywhere I went, there she was.  Right where I needed to go.  And she was a real lady if you know what I mean...just a gentle soul.  So some of the time I just went somewhere else, and others just waited till she moved...and I wondered how much longer would it be till I was that little old lady that wasn't aware of anything or anyone. 

So, we get checked out and are heading to the Rav4 when Roger remembers he meant to get oil to change the oil in it...so he unloads everything and heads back in to get the oil and filter.  I thought about telling him to be sure to get the right filter...but I thought he always checks and double checks.

We come home and unload and he takes the Rav to the garage and drains the oil and removes the old filter before looking at the new one.  He had picked up the wrong on...he comes to tell me he has to go exchange it. He leaves.  He comes back in a minute...the truck would not start.  Dead battery.  So he puts the charger on it and kills a bit of time.  Goes back out and it wouldn't start, but he ran the cables from the Rav to it and it started fine.

Goes for a drive before heading to get the filter.  He gets the filter and comes back out...the battery is dead.  He tells me to go next door to get a neighbor to come give him a jump...and I hate to...and think of my girlfriend...we hang up and I do head over to the neighbor but he is not home.  Another neighbor would have gone, but he has a condition with his eyes where he is not supposed to drive...so I end up calling my girlfriend for her to go.

Well, Roger makes it home..he had decided to just get a new battery...but Walmart didn't have one so it was a good thing my friend went...she took him to an auto parts store to buy one.

I know I am leaving out something...maybe even more than one, but this is enough to share at the moment anyway.  I am just glad the day is done and I can mess around a while.

Time slipping away

It feels like forever since I blogged any, when in fact it just now verging on a week. My older daughter's belongings are now here, she is now in Georgia and has done started her training. And I have been sick. Again. I am not going into details, but will just say there were a couple days that I was pretty miserable. I am pretty much back to normal, and I think a big part of that is due to our activities yesterday.

After breakfast, sometime up in the morn we headed out with camera and fishing equipment. We wanted to see Lorelei since we had not seen her since Tuesday so headed to Terre Haute first. We had not been there but a few minutes till she left and went in the other room, and here she came back dragging her jacket behind her! Roger was sitting in the floor, so she gave it to him and stuck her arm out for him to put it on.

He tried to distract her, but she was not having it. So, we put her jacket on and took her outside thinking that she just wanted to be outside...she went to our Rav4. We did distract her from that...not sure how she would have done had we brought her home. And I still was not totally back to normal, so didn't know how well I would keep up with her. But we really think she wanted us to bring her here. She is such a bright little girl!

We stayed and visited an hour or two, and headed out for a drive...taking roads we had never taken before with the ultimate destination Mansfield...in nearby Parke County. We first stopped at Bridgeton to fish below the dam...I only caught a couple there and Roger not many more than that.

We left there and headed to Mansfield, which is just a few minutes away. The picture above is of the dam...and that is where I really began to feel like myself again. We each caught fish--so many we didn't attempt to keep count. It was a catch and release day for us...neither one of us felt like cleaning fish at the end of the day.

But there is just something about fishing that does me a world of good. I think it is because I focus on fishing only, on what lure to try next, or where I want to cast. I can have the worst headache in the world and if I can go fishing for an hour or two it will be gone. I came home yesterday feeling like a new woman...well, almost new! I was plenty tired, but at least I had been doing something.

Mansfield Covered Bridge

This is a different view of this bridge...not the normal one seen at all. I am sorry about the quality...not sure what happened. I worked on it with Photoshop some, but grew weary. Nothing seemed to really work. Still, I like the view.
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We are watching the Olympics, so not doing much else at night.

I did work on my quilt some today....I brought it upstairs to spread on the bed to see how much I had gotten done. I was happily surprised to find I had more done than I thought. It will still take a good bit of time to finish...just not as much as I thought.

Tomorrow we are heading to see Lorelei for a bit, so I may not be visiting any of the blogs I follow till tomorrow night.

From a 35 mm slide

This is from a slide taken in February of 1995...I removed the color in photo shop as well as altering the shading after that. But you know what--I can't remember what I did to alter it. I have went and made another copy of the original and tried all kinds of variations and cannot duplicate the image here.

Anyway, this is the Mansfield Roller Mill located at Mansfield, Indiana. It is now ah historic site and is now white. In 1995 it was donated to the Indiana Dept. of Natural Resources.

Early summer vs late summer

Remember when Indiana had all the flooding at the beginning of summer? The top photo was taken June 10 just a few days after the flooding. I don't remember ever seeing the water this high at Mansfield.

The bottom picture I took September 10--just a few days ago. This time, the water level in the creek is lower I ever remember seeing it.

Weathered barn...

First of all, I wanted to show you what the buzzards were doing yesterday; it wasn't that there was something dead. It was that they were sunning themselves on the front/back side of the damn. I don't know what the proper term is. We were on a road on top of the damn, with the water being to one side and the vultures the other.

But back to the drive, I have went this road one other time that is a different way to get to Mansfield, Indiana but it has been years. This barn was almost at the very edge of the road. Surrounded by bushes and trees. These really don't portray the feeling it gave me, but that is hard to capture. We were talking and I was wondering what it had been for, and Roger pointed out that probably when it was built it was built to hold a lot of hay.

It just takes me back to another time when I see old barns such as this. Just think about what a job it was to build. Transporting the lumber would have probably been a big job...and it just the beginning. I wonder if the owner built it himself, maybe with the help of family, or did neighbors pitch in and help. Right now where it is located, there sure are not very many neighbors. And I always wonder how they did such a good job with the limited tools they had.

Flooding....

Click to enlarge for better viewing.I really had plans to post some other photos, but we went for another drive today...on the way out of town we went down by the Wabash River. I wanted to take a photo of the railroad over the river that was in the photos on my blog on April24 of this year.
This is showing some more of the farmer's fields under water...
And if you click on the photo below, you will see a 'family' of bats up in the very top of the roof...I happened to notice the bat guano on the floor of the covered bridge and looked up and there they were. This is the best I could do, but it isn't too bad of an effort. I do not know what a group of bats is called and I actually wondered if this was a family. I think there are seven of them...

The photo above is the covered bridge at Bridgeton and down below is the old mill at Mansfield. I have seen these two places in all kind of weather after lots of floods, but I have never seen the water this muddy! We had more rain last night, but I think about an inch was all we got.