After a fairly rough night sleep, I was up super early…. as usual. Turns out that mid March is spring break in these parts and every feral kid in Northwest Florida was camping here last night. I generally only camp on week nights to avoid this situation. It definitely makes a difference in the quality of one’s stay. Get off my lawn!
On the bright side, I didn’t need to worry about being quiet early this morning. I strolled out and shot these early morning iPhone images then headed back in for another cup of coffee.
Now that I am properly caffeinated, I grabbed my big camera and headed out for a stroll on the lake trail. With my adventures my big camera and lens takes a beating. One of my winter projects this year was to refurbish the camera body and lens. This was a couple month project which is now completed so I was excited to give it a whirl.
My stroll started out across the Bear Lake Dam. Y’all know that I love all things hydraulic.
Am I the only one who sees beauty in this drop structure? Notice the mist on the lake, indeed there was a chill in the morning air.
Yesterday Mike warned me about gators but I saw none.
A boardwalk across one of the many swampy areas. Still no gators but defiantly various forms of fresh droppings from wild critters.
Filtered sunrise.
I worked my way around the lake looking for a good sunrise spot. There weren’t many.
These dry grasses feel more like autumn than spring.
Similar shot different angle.
I wrapped up the morning photo shoot and prepared for my transfer to Oak Mountain State Park. I took the road less traveled which is always interesting in these parts. Remember those storms from yesterday’s post? Those storms were quite sever in Alabama and I crossed one of the tornado paths which had brought down a bunch of trees and wiped out an RV dealership. I wanted to stop and shoot photos but did not want to add to the problems.
I arrived and Oak Mountain and was glad to see no kids! Apparently spring break in Alabama is not this week.
Why Oak Mountain? I’m trying to get out and visit some of the notorious mountain bike parks in the south. Oak Mountain is well know in these parts as one of the better destinations and based on my initial scouting ride, it defiantly looks promising.
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