Don't get used to this

Thursday I took most of the day and went on a kind of picture shooting spree so I have plenty of new picture material for a blog entry...so I'll post one.

I went to Bertom Lake (yeah, I know I've said before in this blog that this's not really a lake, it's part of the Mississippi backwaters...but it bears repeating) to go canoeing and the road I usually take under the railroad track was blocked by all sorts of debris from the flood we had here a little bit back. Plus the road was under several feet of water. The combination of the two make for tough driving, especially in a Mercury Tracer station wagon. So no canoeing. But I walked over the railroad tracks to where the road continues on the other side and walked down to where the boat launch usually is. Most of the road was under several inches of water so I was wading. (Nothing new here, coming from me Mr. Streamwalker) It was interesting seeing how the water was and evidence of how high it had been.

This picture is taken of some of the high water at Bertom Lake. The green leaves you see are not a skillful use of Photoshop, they're just reflecting off the water's surface.

After I had finished with my walk to the flooded Bertom Lake boat launch I went to the village of Cassville and walked around a bit in a park of theirs. I went to one of the boat launches and saw kids riding their bikes off the end of the dock into the water. Awesome. Seriously.

It's kind of hard to see on here but on the right side of the picture you can see kids on the dock with bikes. On the left - out in the water you can see a sign that is where the boat ramp is.

This is a picture taken of a leaf on an oak tree up on a Mississippi River

bluff at Nelson Dewey S.P.

I then went to Nelson Dewey State Park to eat the food I had brought with me. Then while I was there I took some more pictures. I walked around on top of the bluff in the sun and breeze and thought it was those two things that were keeping the bugs away. I then headed into the woods and down the bluff and there were few, if any, bugs out. There was a stream down at the bottom of the bluff and I took a few pictures but this stream was kind of the opposite of the one at Schreiner's park (the park I wrote about in the last entry where I walked up the stream bed) and the bugs were bad (and since my bug spray and stuff were in my car back at the top of the bluff I had no choice but to tolerate them). I took a few shots and then skeedaddled back to my car.

Here's a picture of that stream.

After I got back to my car I decided to drive to Glen Haven (an extremely small town that I wouldn't expect any of you to know) and then take Dugway Road over to county highway A and then take CHWY A back to Lancaster. The main attraction here was driving on Dugway Rd. Dugway Rd. is called Dugway because it is dug into a bluff alongside the Mississippi River. It is pretty cool. Back a while ago we used to ride our bikes from Lancaster to Dugway Rd. and then back (about 60 miles roundtrip) just so we could ride on Dugway. It's that cool. Or maybe we're just that weird.

Dugway Road.