What's in Arlo's Backpack?

 

I worked from home today, and at lunch Travalon and I walked at Jackson's Landing. He took some photos. The first one is a weird little island made of a pile of rocks. I've heard a story (legend?) that this was created in the 19th century by a guy who kept piling rocks on the ice in the winter in hopes of making an island where he could build a house, and then when the ice thawed, the rocks would fall into the water. Everyone laughed at him... until an island began to appear, and then they quickly outlawed creating your own island, so he couldn't make it big enough to actually live on. Now it's just a favorite hangout for gulls and ducks and swans.

Later I took a walk in the neighborhood and saw this beautiful larkspur.

In the evening we went for another walk, out to the dock, and saw a glorious sunset.

I had a meeting at 10:30, and around 10:50 we heard a train go by. Travalon found that the guy in Maple Bluff who always films passing trains (he must just have a camera set up that does it automatically) had filmed this train and posted it on social media, so we got to see it after all. It was fun to watch because we recognized some of the graffiti from the pictures Travalon took in the railyard yesterday.

Here are a couple more photos of things around the house. This is a postcard Travalon got in Japan and just rediscovered recently in his stuff.

And this is a cookie one of the German faculty gave me to thank me for helping with the undergrad awards ceremony where the winners got these cookies. Travalon actually ate this cookie - I tried one and found it to be a huge sugar bomb.

And this is sort of random, but in our neighborhood there is bird's foot trefoil blooming which is orange and yellow. Usually it is just yellow.

As promised, here is the video of the Amtrak Empire Builder arriving in Columbus that Travalon took on Saturday:

And another video: what's in Arlo's backpack?

Astute readers will realize this is a sequel to the question of what's in the tiny backpack.

Famous Hat