Sunday afternoon

I talk a lot about Presque Isle State Park, and we have always been visitors, but lately I've been doing some exploring in different areas. I thought I'd post a map so you'd have a small frame of reference in case you're not from Erie. (Sorry for the poor quality, but this was the best I could find in a format that could be uploaded here.)

If you look at this map, in the upper left, you can see the label "Light House." Then there's a red line that says "Sidewalk Trail" cutting diagonally across the map towards the right. This is where we went yesterday.

Interesting aside: At the lighthouse exhibit, there's a sign explaining that the children of the lightkeeper in the old days would have to walk all the way across Sidewalk Trail (2 miles) to Misery Bay, then take a boat across the bay to get to the mainland, then walk ANOTHER mile from the bayfront to get to school.

Before we went onto the peninsula itself, I stopped at the Tom Ridge Environmental Center (yes, THAT Tom Ridge, he of the color-coded terror alerts and duct-tape recommendations; he's a home-town boy.) and took a shot of the lake from the observation tower. I was happy to see some of the ice breaking up!

I was even happier to see a bit of green among all that brown.

Anyway, the highlight of yesterday's trip was actually another beaver. We saw one in the water, and I got a couple of not-great shots. We moved on and were standing watching a couple of woodpeckers when I heard foraging and chomping behind us. I turned, and there was a beaver right on the sidewalk! The pictures aren't great and I haven't tried yet to tweak them in Photoshop but I thought I'd just give one a quick post here.