Black-throated Green Warbler

Dan and Britt launch south this morning. They are headed to Hocking Hills State Park in Ohio, where they’ll camp tonight and maybe tomorrow night, before returning to Brooklyn. We started packing and cleaning after they left. The car is mostly packed now and all of the in-house woodpiles have been replenished. We took a break from domestic activities, because we had a beach day today. This is our last day here, we’ll head south tomorrow. The mercury briefly touched seventy. It was comfortable when we sat out on the red bench, protected from the wind and watched the parade of ore boats coming down. When we went for our walk on the beach, there was a wicked wind out of the south that had blown away all of the dry sand, leaving only the wet sand to walk on. When we turned around from the long-end the wind began sandblasting our ankles. Anyway, it was a beach day, not the best that I’ve ever experienced, but certainly the best in a week. A good day to go out on. It is supposed to rain in the morning, before turning sunny for the afternoon, but we’ll be gone by then, wending our way home on another epic drive in the new RAV4, listening to satellite radio.

The jury is still out as to whether we will have a good sunset or not tonight. Anne caught the fiery ball of the sun floating above the horizon yesterday, but it was too cloudy to capture one of the western wildfire driven sunsets that are in the news. We have enjoyed six weeks up here at the cabin this summer. Kind of a record for us. I’ve stayed up here later in the summer than I ever have before. This long stay has brought more hardships, but more importantly additional opportunities to see and do new things and in this groundhog day of a year, anything new and different is good.