We spent a couple of evenings this week on the Connecticut River between Wilder and Hanover and have finally seen the duckings we hadn’t seen when we paddled earlier in the day.
We saw ducklings of varying ages, some families are new born, others are several weeks old.
The geese flew by.
This mallard male had a funny expression.
Once again our kayaks have proven to be good platforms for observing nature. Jane and I have be out almost everyday this week, mostly on the Connecticut River between Wilder, VT and Hanover, NH but also on the North Hartland Lake.
We haven’t seen many wildfowl: just a few mallards, an occasional merganser and a loon.
We have seen and heard numerous song birds
and even frogs singing.
Its spring and the flowers are blooming in Kilowatt Park.
We took Amtrak from Oakland to Portland, a 17 hour train ride. After spending the night in a roomette, we had breakfast in the dining car and watched the sunrise.
As we passed a burn area, the snow started to pile up.
Uri picked us up at the station and took us to our room.
We spent the next several days roaming the different quadrants of Portland with both sons (Nabil drove up from Berkeley). We visited St Johns, Sauvie Island and watched the birds and boats on the Willamette.
We went up Mt Tabor and looked out to the east and west
Another side trip was up the Columbia Gorge where we saw several waterfalls and a peanut mobile.
We went out for brunch every day, both in California and Portland. I tried the homemade hash most days. My favorites ranged from one in Santa Rosa that was just potatoes and chopped corned beef and another that was made from pulled pork with greens on top.
We often went out for an afternoon snack. The doughnuts here were freshly made and were wonderful.
We hung out at Uri’s house a couple of afternoons.
Uri dropped us off at the airport and we flew home.
I saw a variety of birds while in California.
