Yep, you guessed it, we have been out and about again. Dave, Tobin and I all went to Turnbull NWR for a little hike on Sunday. Our little hike turned into 4.75 miles! We only live about 5 miles away but this is the first time either one of us (I guess this is Tobin's first time too!) have ever been hiking in this area. I kept saying as we were driving there "why have we never been to Turnbull before?". It is so beautiful there - and we saw it on an overcast day.

We we were not lucky enough to see a moose or deer but we did see some interesting birds, a couple of chipmunks and--not to be confused with the previous examples--about 12 nasty, disgusting, horrific, grotesque, ticks. I guess it is the season for ticks and we were without our bug spray. Yuck.

Again, I have taken way too many photos but luckily we have this great blog to share a few of them with you.




One of the coolest things to see (at least for a geek like me) are of formations in the photo below. It is a photo of a mima mound. If you haven't already checked the link, a quick description from Wikipedia:

Mima mounds (pronounced /ˈmaɪmə/ "MEE-mah"), also known as Hogwallows, are uniformly distributed mounds of soil some 1-3 meters tall that occur in various places in the world. Their age or origin is still unknown. Various theories have been proposed: that they are Amerindian or pre-historic peoples' burial mounds, remnants of glacial activity, interactions of the soil with earthquake vibrations, or the cumulative action of gophers or other burrowing animals over a long period of time.^[1]

Here's a link to a creepy aerial photo of mima mounds.



The rocks below are an example of what accumulates around the base of the mima mounds. The soil and rocks are sorted into piles - by what, they don't really know.














I know it looks small but below is a panoramic of about 32 photos stitched together by Photoshop. If you click on it you will be able to see more detail. This view was very lovely.