Time Flies

Today really zipped by for me today and I don't know where all of the time went. I accomplished more than half of my To Do List for the day, but I ran out of time and sunny weather to finish. The day started out nicely, I heard one of the juvenile hawks near my house again. I think it may have watched me put up the flags too. On my drive through the park, I saw one of the owls again. It was much more patient with me today and I was able to get quite a few shots of it before it got uneasy and I left.
More rain last night had made a mess of the park. After I finished the paperwork, I blew off the spring walkway. The parking lot wasn't bad, so I didn't do all of it, but hit the spots that really needed it. Then I spent some time on the river entrance. The river access area is totally submerged during times of flood, so I begin to forget about all of the regular maintenance that it needs. We cleaned up the walkways after the flooding, but we hadn't yet started trimming the grass again. I finally got the opportunity to really try out our new weed eater. It did the job! It was really nice to be able start it and stop it easily. New equipment is so much fun! So, as you can see, I trimmed the edges of the walkway and made a really big mess, then I blew off that area as well as the cabin porch and walkway.
After my morning with the noisemakers, I greeted some park visitors, and returned phone calls and e-mails. Then I headed to Lake City (about a 30 mile drive) to run some errands for the park. I had to stop by the Department of Environmental Health to pick up water testing bottles to sample the well water at Adams Tract for its quarterly check up. I also had quite a few things on my list to pick up from Lowe's. I needed hardware for a few different projects including the buoy line repair that I mentioned yesterday and some light bulbs. I knew we were expecting afternoon thunderstorms, but I was really hoping that they would hold out until 4:00 or so... they didn't. I wasn't able to fix the buoy line today. I will try again tomorrow morning. I finished up paperwork on my purchase at Lowe's and set up the computer for my evening relief to do some data entry while its raining and headed home.
When I pulled into the driveway at home, my little hawk friend was perched on a branch very close to my passenger side door. I put the truck in park, scooted across the seat to the passenger side, rolled down the window, held up my camera... and watched the hawk fly away. Today fizzled, hopefully tomorrow will be better.