Last weekend was beautiful in the Adirondacks. On Friday we snowshoed from Route 3, west of Saranac, to Stoney Creek Pond. Talked to some ice fishermen. One was from Mineville and knew some of susan's relatives. The next day under a beautiful clear blue sky we skiied from the same parking pullout down the road to Upper Saranac Lake and out to Chapel Island. It's a nice little log style church where services are held in the summer.
This mile stretch of land, from SCP to USL was a very importrant Indian settlement and intersection. One of the Algonquin or Iroquois tribes lived there every summer. Think of the easy communication they had by waterways. They could go south by way of the racket r. through long lake and connecting through the fulton chain of lakes right down to the Mohawk valley then west on the mohawk towards the finger lakes and Niagara. They could go west and north along the racket through Tupper lake and beyond to the St Lawrence in the Alexandria Bay area. They could go east through the saranacs to lake champlain and then north to the St. Lawrence or south through champlain to the Hudson with access all the way to Manhatten. Travelling by water was the only easy mode of communication. Many indian artifacts have been found in this area near Corey's but we haven't found any despite looking.

I'm sorry to everyone who got an e-mail for every addition to the calendar I made for this month. I'll have to figure out how to add an event without it notifying everyone by e-mail that they have an appointment. I'm sorry in advance if I make further errors while I do this.

So far Texas has been very rewarding from the scenery to the birding. We did see whooping cranes 2 days in a row, once from land and the other from a boat. With the boat ride we were able to get much closer and could see their behavior better. They are amazing birds and are almost 5 feet tall. Apparently there were only 15 wild birds left in the world 30 years ago. Now the flock that winters in Aransas, Tx is about 200 strong and is the only migrating flock in the world.

We are currently camped at Padre Island National Seashore. Lovely barren landscape of praire and dunes. The Gulf has been rough and we listen to the surf through the night. We glance at it over breakfast. The surf is bringing in sargasso weed and the gulls and sanpipers love it. God has blessed the sanderling clan and they have been fruitful, but even piping plovers are regular here. The grand white-tailed hawks make life dangerous for rodents and reptiles in the grassland.

This was posted on a Florida State Park Web page. I thought it was great. You need to click on it to enlarge the picture to get the real expression on the eagle's face.