Stricker's Pond, Pheasant Branch, and The Journey

 

Yesterday was a very disappointing day. I worked from home, and then my band was supposed to play for Make Music Madison, but we didn't have an indoor venue to play at, and it was raining, so the gig was canceled. My neighbor did take a photo of me with some lilies much like a photo she had taken of me a few years back with some irises.

If you want to see my face, here you go.

Today Travalon and I had a quiet morning, waiting for the rain to let up. I was doing DuoLingo, and the green owl has done a lot of strange things to me, but this one takes the cake: it kept telling me every few minutes that Jilly Moose had unfriended me. Finally I texted her to ask why she had unfriended me, and she said she hadn't. I sent her a screenshot, and she said on her end everything was normal. I got out of DuoLingo and went back in, and then it didn't do that anymore. So weird!

About eleven the rain let up, so Travalon and I went for a walk around Stricker's Pond, and we saw a heron and three egrets.

Check out the breeding plumage on this egret!

We also saw this mourning dove.

On the walk around the pond, we also met Doug the Dog (who looked like a Newfoundland or a Portuguese Water Dog) and a cute little Westie. They were both so sweet and friendly. 

We drove to Middleton and had lunch at a place called Trio Ramen that was really good. Travalon had the ramen, and I was planning to, but then I saw yaki udon on the menu. We split a slice of matcha cheesecake for dessert, then we set off to find the eagle's nest someone had mentioned on our last walk around Stricker's Pond, when we had seen an eagle catch a goldfish there. The woman had said it was at the end of Pheasant Branch, so we went to a trailhead near Travalon's dentist's office, which was very lush and green. We walked a while but saw no sign of an eagle's nest. We did see a mallard family.

Here are some photos of the trail.

Then it started to rain, so we went back to the car and drove to a pond in an industrial area that looked, on the map, like the end of the Pheasant Branch Trail, because after that it turned and had another name. We didn't see any eagle's nest, and then Travalon wondered if it was in the main area of Pheasant Branch. We went there and parked at a spot we hadn't parked at before, where there was a stunning view. By then it had stopped raining.

There was a kiosk there that mentioned a viewing platform to see an eagle's nest. Ah-ha! We followed the trail and found the nest, with a young eagle sitting outside of it.

We also saw lots of wildflowers in bloom. My phone identified these, but many of them I already knew.

Asparagus

Purple coneflowers

Milkweed

Wild indigo

Smooth oxeye

Creeping bellflower

Butterfly weed

And here is the hill that was apparently built by the first nation people living here.

On the way home, just by Athens Gyros, we saw these lovely wildflowers.

My phone says the stunning red flowers are yarrow, which I don't think is right, and it refuses to identify the lovely purple blossoms that look like some sort of sweet pea because it's focused on the daisies. 

We came home and relaxed, then we were going to meet my colleague and her husband at the Journey for dinner, but when we went out to the car, our neighbor said there was a tornado warning and we had to get into her basement. I didn't hear the sirens, so I thought we should have gone, but we did go hide in her basement. My colleague and her husband got to the Journey, an Asian seafood buffet restaurant, and meanwhile it began to storm so we had to wait an hour before we could join them. If we'd gone right away, we might have missed the storm, but because we delayed, we did get a treat - a rainbow!

It's a double rainbow, even. We were driving right toward it, so that was fun. Fortunately my colleague and her husband were still waiting for us, so the evening was salvaged after all, and we got to spend a lot of time talking and laughing with them. They are such fun people!

Famous Hat