A Walk in the Woods

We went to the lake again.
This time it was all three kids, the dog, and me.
Remember how I said last time that the camera might be an inconvenience?
Yep.  It was.  But I'm still very glad to have taken it.

Olivia took a camera too.  The one I don't like to use but is small enough to take on trips.  She got a few good shots.

I love this one that she did.
It's cool to see her perspective.

I cannot even begin to tell you how much I love this path at the lake.  It has natural land bridges (which used to house a beaver dam), ponds covered in algae, wooden bridges for small creeks that occur when it rains.  It is truly Nature at its best.

This fallen tree is at the start of one of the land bridges.
The kids like to climb and hang from it.
It drops off right into the lake. 
I just know one of these days they'll fall in.

There are billions of daddy longlegs walking with us.  Seriously.
We kept trying not to step on them although they are quite camoflaged, and I'm sure we didn't completely succeed.
This one was a little mad that we were staring.  He had a drop of some type of liquid dangling from his mouth.  Or what I'm assuming was his mouth.  I didn't get close enough to ask.

A mushroom growing out of a crevise in a rock (and a daddy longleg underneath) . . .

Running through the forest . . .

This is one of my favorite spots on this path.  It is somewhat of a clearing.  There is very little secondary growth.  Just a bunch of tall, old pines next to the edge of the lake.
Except . . . see that giant tree?  The one that's thick and massive and all gnarly?
There are two of these right opposite each other -- the other is just to the left, not in this shot.
They are great old trees who have probably seen more than I will ever be able to imagine.

This shot . . . one of my favorites.  We were crossing this wooden bridge and the boys began picking up piles of leaves that had accumulated on the bridge and were tossing them up in the air.  Quite happily, I might add.  Disappointing that I blew out their faces, but it's still a wonderful capture of a purely blissful moment.

One day she's going to make an excellent mother . . .