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One more week to go before life gets back to normal! All of my out-of-state trips are behind me, but tonight I'm heading over to Tampa to stay at a hotel for a few days while going through an important training for work. Six Sigma Green Belt, if anyone out there has a clue what that means. We did Yellow Belt last year, so this is the next step. It's a pretty highly desirable item to have on the resume if I ever need to find another job, so it's a nice thing for work to be footing the bill for. Tampa's only an hour away, but the boss wants us focused and able to study and refresh during the evenings, so the hotel is to keep us from needing to spend so much time on the road while the class is underway. I feel rather guilty about it, after being out of town so much over the past month. But after this, no more for a while!

Before I go, though, I thought I'd better make a massive catch-up photo post covering my last couple trips and some stuff in between. So here we go!

So Birmingham, firstly. I didn't have a whole lot of free time, and what I did have could have been spent better. We got there on Wednesday afternoon, and our first stop was dinner before checking in at the hotel. After that I had maybe an hour before sunset, so I went to Red Mountain Park, a place very near the office that I'd first checked out on my last visit. It used to be an iron mining area, and is now converted into a very nice park of hiking trails (with some more stuff being planned) using the old mining trails and roads. There are remnants of mineshafts and whatnot too, though I've yet to make it to any of those! This time I got to the park with just a half an hour before they closed, so I basically hiked out for 15 minutes and then turned around and came back. Not ideal. But it's such a pretty place I didn't mind too much.

I'm big on looking-down-the-trail shots, as you've probably noticed.

Thursday we spent the day at the office, and when we left there was maybe 3 hours before our flight home. My employee is not interested in sightseeing (which I find crazy!), so I dropped him off at the airport and headed out to explore for a bit. And here was my mistake. The first thing that came to mind to visit was Oak Mountain State Park, which I'd visited on my first trip to B'ham and really liked. So I headed there, but it was a longer drive than I remembered, and I didn't have all that much time to begin with, so by the time I got there I basically had hardly any time to explore before I needed to head back to the airport. And I wouldn't have had even that much time, but we'd received word that our flight was delayed a bit. What I SHOULD have done was go downtown to roam around a bit. That would have been closer so I'd have had more time, and probably more interesting to boot because it would have been new stuff for me. But I didn't really familiarize myself with downtown so I wouldn't have known where to go anyway. Bah, next time!

A very short hike at Oak Mountain.

The park has riding trails and a nice stable area, and the horses always make for nice photos. Even though my HDR skills as of late really suck.

Back home for the weekend, that Saturday we headed to Bill Frederick Park on Turkey Lake, which is a very nice local park. It has a kids' farm with a nice variety of animals, so the girls always enjoy that.

There's also a neat little trail with some activities for kids along the way. One of them is a construction area with blocks of wood for kids to build stuff. I liked what Hermione came up with!

Playgrounds are always a hit, of course.

That afternoon we went to the pet store. We'd gone the weekend before, and there was an organization there offering cat adoptions. They had some tiny kittens on hand, and it transpired that they were looking for foster homes for those and other kittens. The idea excited Heather and the girls, so they ended up volunteering to foster, and we went back to pick them up. We got a fairly young Mom cat and her 3 kittens, probably 2-3 weeks old.

Oh, but I need to back up! The weekend before, when we went to the pet store, Heather's sister Stef had come over for a visit. That Saturday morning I took the girls to Lake Eola in the morning, to give Heather some quiet time before Stef arrived.

There were lots of swans and cygnets!

And some neat new art installations that were added since our last visit. It's a great park, right in the heart of downtown Orlando--but that's why we don't come often. Parking is tough and there tend to be more panhandlers than we care for.

Swan nest!

Fallen Tabebuia flowers, which the girls call Finger Flowers for reasons which should here be apparent.

We went home, Stef arrived, and we went right back out for lunch and to another downtown area park we like--actually a pair of parks, Dickson Azalea and Langford Parks, which are right across the street from each other.

There were lots of Eastern lubber nymphs hopping around, so the girls had fun catching them.

I spotted this Eastern black racer hanging out in some bushes.

Sunday (Easter, this was) I strapped on the kayak and we headed up to De Leon Springs for brunch and a paddle, and maybe some swimming in the spring pool. But it turned out to be a rather chilly morning, so swimming was out.

The restaurant in the park is in a building you see above--it was originally a sugar mill, built around 1900. The main attraction is pancakes--each table has an electric griddle built in, so they bring you pitchers of pancake batter and you fry them up yourself. Kinda cool!

Please ignore the goofy guy on the right.

Before lunch, Hermione and I took a quick paddle on the kayak, where we saw this Great Blue Heron.

And some duck potato.

After lunch, Heather and Stef went out for a paddle while the girls ran around being silly.

Then I went back out for a little bit, and saw a tricolored heron.

And got the stinkeye from this cormorant.

Okay, back to the timeline. Where was I? I got home from Birmingham, we got the kittens.. oh yeah! That Sunday we went to Lake Lotus Park, which is close to home but we hadn't been for some time. It turned out to be a good day for finding critters!

More Eastern lubber nymphs.

A young katydid of some sort.

A ground skink, which I don't think we'd ever seen before. Neat!

Green orchid bee.

More kitten fun. It's been a good learning experience for Amy--at first she wasn't very gentle with the kittens, she'd grab them and squeeze them and generally be pretty rough with them. She's gotten a lot better, though.

And then I was off to Indianapolis! This trip was very much like the Birmingham trip, so my only real free time was after dinner and checking in at the hotel Wednesday evening. Luckily sunset was late, so even with the late start I had some good time before the park closed--this time I went to check out Eagle Creek Park, which is apparently one of the largest city parks in the nation. It's located around a reservoir created by the Eagle Creek Dam, and is very popular with birds. I took a nice hike around the bird sanctuary portion of the park. It was chilly and windy out, but not too bad.

There's an ornithology center at the park--it was closed for the day, but the feeding station was hopping! Goldfinches galore!

This chipmunk was nice enough to pose for me.

I adore daffodils, something else we don't really see down here.

Nice trails.

A good portion of the trail was this narrow strip of land dividing the bird sanctuary part of the reservoir from the rest. A very neat walk!

I saw lots of Canada geese but no goslings, until I rounded a bend and spotted this mom and baby. Too cute! But how many goslings do you think she has tucked away under her wing?

I count 5, pretty impressive!

On the way out of the park, a pair of white-tailed deer had come out to graze.

This past weekend, Saturday was rainy and nasty all day, so we really didn't do much except clean up around the house. But Sunday looked much nicer, so I hatched a plan to head over to the Ponce Inlet lighthouse, and we also decided to check out the nearby Marine Science Center, which we'd noticed but never stopped into.

Amy's still too young to climb the tower, but the older girls were excited to head up!

203 steps in all, or so we were told.

Looking down! I'd never thought to check it out, but at 175 feet this is the 3rd-tallest lighthouse in the country, after Cape Hatteras (207 feet) and Charles Point in Virginia (191 feet). Built of brick around 1887, it's also one of the tallest masonry structures in the country.

A view from the top, looking at Ponce Inlet and the Atlantic Ocean. The building to the left of center is the Marine Science Center, and the one with the screened-in part at lower right is their seabird rehabilitation center.

This was something I hadn't tried before--since it's an active beacon, you can't actually go up into the light platform. But there was a gap in the barricade that I could fit my camera into, so I grabbed a couple shots using the LCD screen to compose, and they came out quite nicely!

Heading back down!

The plaque on the wall by the window here tells the story of one of the lighthouse keepers who died at the spot in 1919--had a heart attack while climbing the tower. Being somewhat out of shape myself, I could relate.

Fibonacci spiral, anyone?

Ponce Inlet is one of the best-preserved lighthouses in the country, and the grounds are a pretty good museum to boot. This is a little building full of fresnel lighthouse beacons and other signaling lights, very cool.

Over at the Marine Science Center.

Petting stingrays!

Seahorses are awesome.

These crabs decorate themselves with stuff from their environment for camouflage. Pretty nifty.

Okay, one more kitty shot.

The pool was still a little too cold for me, but the girls don't mind it a bit.

African iris in the pool area, blooming nicely this year.

Hermione mid-twirly jump.

Amy loves Minnie Mouse, so she got a new Minnie bathing suit with this hooded cover-up. Pretty cute!

Whew, that was more than I thought, sorry. But thanks for looking!