D is for Didn’t Get it Done

If you follow the Goings On of the Garners at all (Hi Dad!) you’ll have noticed that as a sort of writing prompt exercise, I started Blogging through the Alphabet with Marcy over at Ben and Me.  I had tried this before back in the fall, and it yielded about 4 posts before I gave up.  I prepared A is for Astronomy,  but I missed the deadline for “B.”  I was pleased with  C is for Commonplace Book and D is for Dvorak.  I was less excited about E, and F had me completely flummoxed, so I didn’t blog those letters.  I managed G is for Great Falls, but missed H,  I and J.  So I let it go, because to continue when I had missed all of those letters, two of which are vowels, seemed very incomplete.

When Marcy started over again, (she had blogged all 26 alphabet letters!) I decided to try it again, and wondered how far I would get.  This time I got to D and Didn’t Get It  Done.

I had quite a few ideas – D is for Dust.  This one would have been a picture post!  I thought about D is for Doric, but felt that Ionic and Corinthian should have their due so that will be coming later in a post, G is for Greek Architecture…(surely the anticipation is building!)  I considered D is for Doves (we have some new baby doves visiting our feeder), D is for Ducks (we’ll soon have some baby ducks visiting, assuming I’m a good judge of Mallard mating behavior), D is for Dill, Dickens, Domes (more architecture), Discs (as in Ultimate Frisbee), and Drill (a potential Latin Lovers post).  As you can tell I had lots of choices but I didn’t get it done.

I did have a great weekend with Mr. Garner and our American Heritage Girl at the Family Camp Out at Northwest River Park!  Mr. Garner showed us girls how to put up our tent, and how to build a fire in the fire pit.  He fixed us up a wonderful dinner of Grilled Chicken, Green Beans and Baked Potatoes in the coals!  We sat out by the fire and looked up at bright, sparkling stars in a dark blue sky, savored the crackling warmth and listened to the fireside antics of the young children in neighboring tents.  The giggles and parental remonstrances slowly quieted as bedtimes came and went, and the sounds shifted to an occasional dog bark, the fall of a log on the fire, a shower of sparks, and the soughing of the wind advancing through tall swaying trees.

Morning brought hot coffee (Okay, it was Folgers instant, but it was good and hot!) fried eggs, sausage links, and blueberry muffins tucked inside orange peel halves, wrapped in foil and cooked in the coals! Delicious!  After a morning gathering with other families working through fun bonding and problem solving activities, GraceNotes scampered off to complete a few items on her camping badge and Mr. Garner and I did a little exploring.  Dinner was shish-ke-bob and then we were off to a Night Prowl presentation which eliminated all possibility of an unknowing encounter with poison ivy (I thrilled when GraceNotes looked knowingly at me when we learned poison-ivy-impersonator Virginia Creeper’s botanical nomenclature,  Parthenocissus quinquefolia,  because we had just learned our cardinal and ordinal numbers in Latin!), and featured star-gazing in a wide open field,  a physics lesson on sparks-emitted-by-teeth-chomping-wintergreen-lifesavers, and calling local owls (the Great Horned owl, Barred owl and Screech Owl are all native but they knew better than to show up).   Snuggling in our sleeping bags that night, we fell asleep listening for owl calls, then woke to morning birds chirping and trilling, and golden sunshine glowing green amidst the baby leaves unfurling in the trees.

All in all it was a deeply satisfying weekend, even if I didn’t get my “D is for “ blog post done (by the deadline)!

AHG Beach Clean-up (and Nature Walk)

American Heritage Girls are back!  After a summer break, GraceNotes was so excited to see her friends again.  Saturday was the AHG Day of Service all across the country.  GraceNotes’ troop leaders had both a morning and afternoon service project planned, so we opted for the morning which was to clean-up the beach at First Landing State Park (formerly Seashore State Park)!  The skies looked a bit stormy when we first got there, the wind was stiff, and there was significant chop on the normally placid Chesapeake Bay.

The troop patrolled a rather large section of the beach, and found it was pretty clean already except for a great quantity of cigarette butts!  We found remnants of plastic bags mixed in with seaweed in a few places, and bottle lids, and lots of pieces of plastic.  As a group, we were carrying at least six enormous orange trash bags and they all had plenty of trash in them!

While Grace and a friend were ahead of us collecting trash.  Mr. Garner and I  stayed a little bit behind,  and gleaned what trash was missed.  And, I took a few pictures…  All along the break line up and down the beach we found what probably amounted to thousands of horseshoe crabs that appear to have come ashore during the higher spring tides of the new moon.   We could only surmise that they were unable to get back to the bay, either because they flipped over, or because the tide had begun to recede.  They were dead, and many appeared to have been a feast for seabirds.   Horseshoe strandings are highly anticipated by migratory sea birds so we tried not to be sad.  We also saw pelicans, skate egg casings (mermaid purses), and sand crabs, and a couple container ships lined up in the Bay waiting for their turn to come into the port.

Here are a few photos … and there are links to more information about Horseshoe Crabs, AHG and First Landing State Park just below.

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Click here for more information about Horseshoe Crabs in the Chesapeake Bay. 

Click here for more a website dedicated to Horseshoe Crabs (including history, a poem (!), and anatomy)

Click here for more information about American Heritage Girls.

Click here for more information about First Landing State Park.

Thanks for reading!

Dismal Swamp Ride and Zebra Swallowtail Butterflies

Memorial Day Weekend offered a beautiful Saturday – perfect for loading the bikes and driving to the Dismal Swamp Trail.  We needed to fit in one more 10 mile bike ride to meet the requirements for GraceNotes’s AHG Bicycling Badge.  This trail is flat road, formerly Rt. 17, and runs about 8 miles alongside the Dismal Swamp Canal.  So, we planned to go 5 miles or so, and then turn around and head back.  We had a great time!  There was a wonderful breeze almost the whole time we were riding.  A flotilla of immense fluffy white cumulus clouds held back the heat while allowing for occasional glimpses of bright blue sky.  The trees that border the trail and the Dismal Swamp Canal kept us close to or in the cooling shade.

We saw a few Black Snakes (nothing venomous), a very busy Dung Beetle (who knew!?) , and heard a Bob White calling, but couldn’t find him! GN and I took a break on one of many benches along the canal and noticed a great many unfamiliar blue-striped butterflies fluttering about the clover.  I managed to grab a few photos with my phone.  Today, I looked them up in my Butterflies of North America and discovered they are  Zebra Swallowtail Butterflies.  The caterpillars require PawPaw trees, which are abundant in the Dismal Swamp region.  The Pawpaw fruit is a favorite of raccoons and bears which may be why we saw a sign with instructions for bear sitings!

The Great Dismal Swamp Park has even more to offer, so we will go back again soon!

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Biking Cape Henry Trail…

#2 Ratchets work the best...

Each trip to Walmart or Target towards the end of 2011 included a side trip to the bike department to look over the bikes on display.  When you consider that the last quarter of each year includes a cluster of holidays that require copious amounts of shopping – you’ll realize that we looked at a lot of bikes!  Or rather, we looked at a bike, a lot.  A purple one, of course.

The bike that we selected actually came in a box, and after a detour to Papa Gene’s for quality assembly it appeared Christmas afternoon when Papa Gene and Uncle Mark arrived for Christmas Dinner.  So as the New Year began, it seemed a good time to begin working on Grace’s American Heritage Girl Bicycling Badge.  

Pumping the tires!

A focus on hand signals, safety, and proper clothing for day and night are the initial badge requirements, and from there, girls must learn to use tools to do basic bike maintenance and repair, and last, complete some lengthy bike trips.  This Kids Health Bike Safety web site article hits all the major points!  Ralph worked with our Explorer on adjusting her seat height, and pumping tires.  He also showed her how to put a bike chain back on the track! 

Next up was looking for appropriate locations for 5 mile and 10 mile bike ride.  This requirement has taken a little longer to meet, partly because of the weather, partly because of our hectic Saturday schedule, and partly because we wanted a good ride that isn’t streetside.   In our city, there aren’t many locations for long rides that aren’t on a major road at some point.  Looking farther afield at Virginia Beach we were reminded of a great option! 

Our first venture out for a long ride was to Seashore State Park (aka First Landing State Park).  The park has many trails, but only one for bikes, a multi-use trail called the Cape Henry Trail.  Ralph and I rode this trail years ago with friends, and then again with Ian when he was little.  Grace had never been, so this was a new adventure for her.  We headed out to the park late morning after getting a few chores done.  Turning in to the Southern portion of the park at the Trails entrance off of Shore Dr., we paid $5 for parking ($4 on weekdays, and $40 for a season pass according to another biking family), unpacked the bikes and set off!

Map of the various trails at First Landing (aka Seashore) State Park.

The trail is just over 6 miles, but it is not a loop! So, if you ride the full distance, you must turn around and ride 6 miles back to the parking lot!  12 miles sounded like a lot first time out on a longer ride, so we decided to play it by ear and see how we did.  Riding a bike on a woodland trail is a little more demanding than riding the flat streets of our neighborhood.  When we reached the 2.5 mile marker (it was really more like 3 miles from the parking lot), we saw that our water bottles were already low, and faces were a little pink.  We decided to turn around and just plan to meet the 5 mile requirement this time.  Everyone agreed that it was way fun!

The trail goes up and down alongside bogs and marshland,  the still waters are studded with cypress trees draped with Spanish Moss.  The sun filters through the upper canopy lighting up new green leaves along the path, but doesn’t penetrate enough to be too hot.  In the summer we suspect it will be a tad steamy and buggy, so note to self, “pack the Sawyers.” There were lots of walkers, joggers and other bike folk, and we found that everyone was quite cordial, sharing a greeting and the path.  Back at the car, Ralph and I looked at each other and asked “Why don’t we do this more often?” After loading up the bikes, we drove over to the North side of the park (it is bisected by Shore Drive) to show Grace the campsites, and to go dip our feet in the Bay.  The water was still very cold!

We’ll be striving to massage our schedule to allow for more time on our bikes in God’s great outdoors!  The Cape Henry Trail is only one of several wonderful hiking trails at First Landing State Park, and we hope to return without our bikes to enjoy Kingfisher Trail, or Osmanthus Trail, or Fox Run Trail!  We are really grateful for our local American Heritage Girl troop!  Working with our Explorer on these badges has been a lot of fun, and has nudged us out of our stodgy routines! 

In about two weeks, we are hoping to visit the Dismal Swamp Trail in  Chesapeake for the 10 mile ride - we’ll let you know how it goes!

A few photos: 

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