Hiking at Pigeon Roost, now with pictures

After all the complaining about the problems with our hiking trip this past weekend, it is only fair that I show you the good stuff. The weather was pretty good - a little warmer and more humid than is ideal (for me anyway), but not truly unpleasant. Most of the trees have not yet regained their leaves, so we had good views of the hills, and eventually the lake.

The wildflowers were delightful - violets, and little white flowers that sort of looked like a type of allium (picture of those didn't come out), and these little rock rose-types.

I'm still experimenting with the various settings on my DSLR, and trying to take pictures while holding a dog leash is not idea (yes, I did have Benjamin hold it some of the time, but not always), so the pictures didn't come out as well as I had hoped. I ended up having to adjust the balance and colors on the computer, which I would prefer not to do - I want my picture to be untouched-up. Not that it is a crime to "fix" a picture - the primary reason Ansel Adams' pictures are so very good is his darkroom technique - but I don't really like doing it because of operator error. Oh well, gives me a good reason to go hiking again next spring.

Here are a couple of pictures for those of you who want to have pictures of my pregnant belly. Since I refuse to post posed belly pictures until I am truly "great with child" (and am even more adamant about never referring to it as a bump) they are all you are going to get for a while. Not a whole lot to see yet.

Hmm. This one is sort of awkward - where is my other leg? And pictures of people eating, not generally graceful. Oh well. You can see our cooking set-up on the grill of the brand-new fire pit (and a very nice fire pit it was), and the too-short tent pad in the background.

Miikka in a quiet, and relatively undirty moment. Because the boy scouts had taken out the old, rusted fire pits (we saw them farther down the trail, waiting to be taken out by boat), they had also scattered all the old ashes around the area. Miikka had a good time hunting for food scraps and lolling in the ashes; since we also slept with him, the tent got rather gritty as well. The first thing I did when we got home was give him a bath.

And our morning view of our corner of a very large, winding lake. If the trees had been in full leaf, we would hardly have been able to see any glimmer of water. I didn't take any pictures on the hike out, since I packed the camera in my backpack. The wildflowers were still very pretty though.