The new year is here... and we finally made it out on our first camping trip of 2012 with our friends Jim & Linda, and Glinda & Tim. We all camped at River Bend, which is a wonderful Linn County Park within an hours drive from home. With the cost of fuel and diesel being what it is right now, it's a blessing to have such wonderful campgrounds so close to us. On this trip, we ended up camping in the "newer" section of River Bend which opened up last summer. The sites are larger and wider, making it much nicer for camping. Of course our first two days were met with rain showers on and off, but that's just typical weather this time of the year. The weather eventually cleared up, and we finally got to see some Sun.
*** Click on images to make them larger for viewing ***
Our Campsite - F9
Our HitchHiker 5th Wheel Trailer... "Home away from Home"
An Osprey Nest behind our camping site
While walking Abby our first day in camp, we discovered an Osprey nest very close to our camping site. It was raining the day we discovered it, and the Mom & Dad Osprey were teaching a youngster how to fly from the next. I was hoping to catch a picture of the "loud" family, but a just few days later... the nest sat empty, and all the occupants had all flown away.
Karen and I finally got to hike the many trails around River Bend (once the Sun came out), and saw many of the early Spring flowers and Trillium's starting to appear.
A fern just getting ready to open up
Pinks & Greens
Little white flowers blooming among the shamrocks
Abby cooling off and getting a drink in the river
On our last night in camp, Abby had to go outside to run to the bathroom at around 3:30am. When I walked outside with her, the sky was filled with "Billions & Billions" of stars (my bad impression of Carl Segan). I decided to try some Nighttime Star Photography, which I'd never done before. But with the Milky Way band of stars so visible in the dark sky, I had to give it a try. Below are some of my results... and the image with a red light, is just me playing around with a laser pointer that was built into the flashlight I was using.
The BIG Dipper behind our trailer
Playing with a red laser
The Milky Way Stars
More Milky Way Stars
It looks as though the new camping year has started out well... with more fun adventures around the corner yet to come. Thanks for taking the time to travel along with us on our trips, and we look forward to seeing you all down the road in the future.
Happy Trails...
Gary & Karen... and Abby Too!
Looks like a beautiful place to camp. Going to be hard to top but I'm sure you'll manage.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing the pics of flowers, and the jillion stars. You are a great photographer.
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